


gave you a regal name (don't know when i'll be slain)

by kitnita



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Bard Travis, Boy King Carter Hart, Fantasy Violence, M/M, Monster Hunter Nolan, Slow Burn, the inherent homoeroticism of going on a quest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:15:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25997332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitnita/pseuds/kitnita
Summary: Nolan’s been hired by plenty of people to kill plenty of monsters. Hell, he’s even worked for the boy king and his knights before. There shouldn’t be anything different about his quest to capture the orange beast — it should benothingto focus and get it done with the single-minded determination that’s ruled his days since he first came into his magic. This is the quest that could restore his welcome in the eyes of the kingdom. This is the quest that could make him a knight. Nothing should be able to distract Nolan from doing what his king and kingdom need of him.If only he didn’t have one very distracting bard tagging along, like he thinks Nolan might not have to survive on his own.
Relationships: Travis Konecny/Nolan Patrick
Comments: 23
Kudos: 56





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i legitimately haven’t written or published any fanfic since 2011 so please bear with me! this is also, legitimately, the most self indulgent thing i could’ve broken the seal with. none of y’all know me but just Know this is the most on brand thing i’ve maybe ever written in my life.
> 
> this is NOT a witcher au for two reasons and two reasons only: **1.)** i straight up don’t know enough about the witcher to have made that work and **2.)** my dumb little brain loves developing original fantasy lore too much. that said, i _did_ pull some inspiration for the general dynamic at play in this story from the vibes between a stoic, magic monster hunter and verbose, personable bard, because i could and it worked. 
> 
> title from camera obscura’s fifth in line to the throne. you can find it and other songs i listened to while writing [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4PvZ9iXUB1MboyM83eUQhw?si=jOc-l7RkRXWZUYozkF4iOg) in the story’s playlist! also, you can check out the pinterest inspo board for this fic [here](https://pin.it/4y9NUzG) if getting a feel for the Vibes is something you’re into. 
> 
> **DISCLAIMER** : this is 100% a work of fiction. it borrows names and other details from publicly available information about public figures, but all characterization and events are fictional and not intended to say anything about those public figures. the world depicted in this story is as original as any other vaguely medieval high fantasy world — any similarities to other worlds or settings is coincidental and unintended.

_Fish really shouldn’t have this many teeth_ , Nolan thought to himself as he faced the screaming maw of his latest job. And no one had asked, but he also thought that they shouldn’t be twice as tall as he was; it was no easy feat, being double his height. He’d taken care of many creatures roughly the same size as the sea monster, but something about the things _gills_ filled him with a sense of discomfort. A fish shouldn’t be double his height. A fish shouldn’t have that many teeth. He much preferred when his sea monsters resembled wyrms. The teeth and the size weren’t as odd when the thing didn’t look like the dinner he’d eat when he finished the job.

Part of him hoped that the thing’s gills being out of the water for so long would begin to have an adverse effect. No such luck, so far. Luck like that was rarely on Nolan’s side. But it didn’t hurt to think the break the world owed him was coming sometime soon.

The thing snapped its teeth at him again and he wondered if it wasn’t just, like, a normal fish that some asshole had magicked all weird. This fishing town struck him as an incredibly _bored_ one; he wouldn’t put the careless cruelty past some fishmonger’s son with more magic than he knew what to do with.

It wasn’t the first time a monster he encountered was not so magical at its core. Still. The thing could not be allowed to go on its merry way, taking bites out of people. Frog’s Mouth might not have struck him as the friendliest town, but their coin was waiting for him if he just did what was asked. He had no proof the giant-fish was just a fish turned giant (just his intuition, which rarely steered him wrong, but — ), so he had to buck up and slay the damn thing before he froze his ass off in the sea.

He tightened his grip on his favored sword, the leather of the hilt soaked through in a way that had him gritting his teeth in annoyance. His hands were wet and his sword was wet and his clothes were wet and his hair was wet. He could smell the salt on him, filling his nose, almost drowning out the stench of the fish monster. Standing waist deep in the waves, he could feel his boots filling with water. The caress of kelp and the mist raised by the winds fought for his attention; heightened senses were a real pain, when the monster was an easy kill.

The rains had come on especially strong this month. This job was the third in a row that had him drenched. One more like this and he’d need to rehilt his sword. As it was, he’d need to take care to prevent it from rusting. He wondered if he could get the town to throw him some free sword oil along with the promised coin. Call it hazard pay; he wondered if he could beg a free night in the inn, too. He wasn’t exactly charming, and Frog’s Mouth wasn’t exactly full of people he wanted to charm. But he wasn’t above trying to wheedle free stuff from the people who hired him.

He made an easy slash at the sea monster, his eyes darting quick and sure to see how it moved, how it reacted. Originally magic or not, the giant fish wasn’t very fast half out of the sea as it was. Its dorsal fins all seemed to end in fine, deadly spikes, but he doubted the thing knew how to use them. Its red eyes seemed mean, but stupid. Almost startled that it was having to face a person ready to fight back. Nolan bared his own teeth at it out of principle more than anything else. It was easy to take bites out of old men checking their nets, women taking their children to the rocky beach. No monster had taken a bite out of him and lived.

He knew it would be easy to finish the job once he got a decent hit on the fish; those teeth were the only problem. It was gnashing them constantly, baring them as if it knew there was an enemy nearby and simply couldn’t tell when the enemy was and wasn’t near its mouth. If it would just _stop_ , for a second, his target of its soft belly would be far easier to get to. Then they could both be done with this encounter.

Nolan hated fish monsters and he hated stupid monsters, and, mostly, he couldn’t wait to kill this thing and be done with it.

It was hard for him to move silently in the water; not as hard as it would be for a normal person, but still, he grimaced at the flow of the sea, the splashing sounds he made. The fish seemed no more aware of him now that he was moving. Small blessings. He was almost glad that the wind was picking up and tossing the waves around. His vision was finely honed and had no trouble cutting through the water to his target, and he knew the fish was not having similar luck.

The world had yet to give him the break he was due, but it didn’t cut breaks to those opposing him, either. It was uniformly harsh, and Nolan would take that for the reprieve it was.

His sword arced through the water, sending a shower of sea water to mingle with the misted wind already ribboning around him. Time slowed for Nolan. His senses, when his body thought him in a fight, heightened with a frenzy. Nolan could swear he smelled the panicked anger on the giant fish’s breath; he could hear the frantic movements its fins made in the water, the hoarse sounds escaping its mouth in an impression of a scream. He could see an opening to kill it two seconds before it happened. By the time the sea monster closed its mouth for a second, a precious second, Nolan’s sword found itself buried deep in its heart.

He drew his blade up, towards the thing’s mouth, and tore it open with his sword. A fine spray of blood carried on the winds as easily as mist, and he could see fish guts mingling in the waves around him. The water, freezing though it was, warmed for a moment as the monster’s body made peace with its death. Nolan grimaced again.

He wouldn’t just need to dry these clothes, then. He’d need to wash them too. This day just kept getting better and better.

Now that the monster was dead, he felt bad hating it, felt bad committing any more violence towards it. But the good people of Frog’s Mouth had asked for proof of its demise. They didn’t trust him. None of them had come out and _said_ as much. But Nolan was used enough to being distrusted that he could see the signs. They wouldn’t pay him what they promised unless he brought them their proof. He was covered in fish blood and monster guts and somehow he knew that wouldn’t be enough for them. Towns who hired a monster hunter to take care of their problems were usually bloodthirsty ones.

He felt the grimace slipping from his face, a still mask of resignation falling over his features as easily as the water still roiling up around him. He reached a hand to grasp the monster, finding purchase in the warmth of the mortal wound he’d made, as he used his still bloody sword to carefully cut the knife-sharp dorsal fin from the beast. It would make a pretty trophy for the mantle of the mayor’s home. He seemed the sort to be proud of such a display. Nolan pictured it, hanging over a merry fire, as the man threw an extravagant party the town couldn’t afford. He seemed the sort to be proud of such parties.

It started raining, then. With a bloody hand, Nolan shoved long locks of sodden hair out of his eyes as he turned back to the shore and began his trek to Frog’s Mouth.

He’d been through a lot of unfortunate towns in his time. More than most non-monster hunters, he’d wager, and maybe a little more than others of his craft. But Frog’s Mouth was _really_ unfortunate, not least because its name was so ungodly. The sign that welcomed him into town was shaped like a frog’s head with a wide open mouth, paint peeling around teeth much pointier than he was comfortable with. It was demented. Nolan would swear the eyes on it followed him. That damned frog sign made his skin crawl more than the actual monster he’d just, you know, vanquished.

He made his way past it dripping water and blood, a sea monster’s fin in one hand and a sword in another. The rain had chilled whatever meager warmth he’d found from the blood of the giant fish; but it was at least washing most of the blood off of him, too. The rain was also keeping most of the townspeople indoors; Nolan could see pockets of warm light escaping windows, beckoning and taunting him.

He was meant to deliver his trophy to the town’s council at the mayor’s house, set on a distant hill far past the frog sign. He wondered if that’s what made him the mayor — that he could afford to live somewhere far away from the all-seeing eyes of the frog sign.

His vision was still, regrettably, sharpened, and he saw more than one curious face press to the glass of their windows to watch him pass. He schooled his features to something blank and bland and even. He adjusted his grip on sword and fin both. He carried on to the mayor’s house. After all, his coin awaited him.

* * *

The mayor was a cliche. The man, with his slick smile, had hung the fin over his fireplace, “just to dry, you understand,” before Nolan had even been paid. The two other members of the town’s governing council watched him do so with one eye; he’d swear the other was kept trained on him, lest he do something absolutely _wild_ , like drip onto the rug he’d been told not to stand on. It wasn’t like he’d been led to this rug-dominated room by the three of them, or anything.

“It’s an import from West Anslya, you understand,” the mayor had said. “It would be so much trouble to clean all that … blood from its fibers. “

If he dripped on the stupid rug, it would become a whole thing where he’d have to pretend as if he was _really very sorry_ about that, and the mayor would say some other inane thing that ended in “you understand.” And the other two useless council members would stand there blinking at him in shock, like he’d committed some grave offense instead of just dripping on imported fibers. Much better to nod and say nothing and let them read it as, whatever, mysteriousness.

“There,” the mayor said. He made a final adjustment to the way the sea monster’s fin hung on his wall, angling one of the sharp points a little to the left. Nolan could smell the blood before it welled out of the small cut now gracing one of the mayor’s fingers. He wrinkled his nose as discreetly as he could. He _really_ hated how long it took his senses to settle back down and act normal. The mayor, for his part, stared at his hand in shock. The other two council members looked at it also, although Nolan saw less shock on them.

Maybe they realized how stupid it was to move some knife-sharp, deadly, monster body part around like it was your newest commissioned oil painting.

“I’d clean that before bandaging it,” Nolan offered in an undertone. The mayor nodded absently at him before glancing up. His gaze was sharp on Nolan now, as if the man had forgotten to be wary of Nolan and was now wondering why he’d let him into the house in the first place.

He nodded again, a precise, decisive thing. “Yes, thank you. I believe I will. Now,” he cleared his throat. The room was quiet for a beat and Nolan tried his best not to drip blood and rain and sea water on anything now that the room’s full attention seemed trained on him. “Your payment. Fenrick,” he called out, and some guy came out of nowhere to stand at his shoulder. Nolan’s hearing was still coming down to normal human levels and even he hadn’t heard the guy’s footsteps. If Nolan ever found himself in a position to have manservant just wandering around, he’d request one with heavier steps. The mayor turned to Fenrick and ordered in an undertone, “Get the hunter his payment. “

Nolan didn’t grimace at being referred to as _the hunter_ , but it was a near thing. He wondered if this was his opening to ask for some sword oil or a night at the local inn as added compensation. He cleared his throat and thought about it, in the hushed pause that came over the room with Fenrick come and gone.

“Thanks,” he said, voice a little pinched. “And. With the rain, and it being night and all. It’s going to be hard for me to leave Frog’s Mouth. Is the inn — ?”

One of the council members blinked at him again. “The inn is lovely,” she said. She didn’t sound much like she wanted him to see it for himself. “But I should think, what with that vision of yours, travelling at night should be no problem.”

Nolan didn’t grimace at that, either, but it was a closer call. He grit his teeth and decidedly said nothing. He didn’t want to entertain allusions to _that vision of his_.

The other council member was, at least, a little better at feigning polite cheer. Maybe he just remembered that Nolan had just killed a monster for them; maybe he was one of those assholes who thrived in high stress situations. Nolan didn’t question it. He wasn’t in the habit of looking gift horses in the mouth. The councilman gave a jovial laugh and said, “Oh, there’s always room at the inn. I’m sure … that is, there should be room for you there, yes.” he paused. “I believe your horse is staying in its stables, anyway.”

Snow was, yeah. Nolan nodded. The councilman nodded. The mayor and the councilwoman both looked as if they wanted to say something and were barely biting their tongues. Nolan thought about saying thank you to the councilman, who seemed to be smiling wider to make up for all the silence in the wake of his attempt at conversation. Nolan spared a second to wonder how the hell their council meetings went, if anything got done in the bored seaside town of Frog’s Mouth. Luckily, Fenrick came back with a purse heavy with coin before Nolan could hurt himself with wondering.

He handed it to the mayor instead of going directly to Nolan. Nolan saw the mayor grimace at this — _boohoo_ , now he’d have to interact with Nolan directly one last time. He had a remarkable recovery time, though. The grimace was hardly on his face for a second before he masked it with something aggressively polite. “I’m sure our inn would be happy to house you for the evening. Tell Lisbet we’re sending you to her.”

Nolan nodded, again. He wasn’t sure who the hell Lisbet _was_ , but if he had to find her to get a room he’d be sure to hunt her down, no problem. The mayor nodded when he saw Nolan nod, and once again the room was settling into an odd silence. Belatedly, the mayor handed Nolan the purse. Nolan thought about nodding again before figuring that if he ever wanted to make it out of this place and towards the inn, he’d have to say some sort of goodbye. Now was as good a time as any to do so.

“Thank you. Your town’s waters should be safe now. Uh, from the sea monster. It feels like maybe the storm season’s picking up, so maybe not so safe on that front, now.” Gods, but he was shit at small talk. No doubt residents of a fishing town on the sea knew when the storm season was. He clenched his hand around the purse and thought for a second, hoping his general _‘air of mystery’_ didn’t make him seem so fucking incompetent with words, when it took him forever to finish a thought. “Well. I won’t bother you any longer.”

The council members were back to deferring, largely, to the mayor. They both seemed to turn towards him, and the man himself gave Nolan a tight-lipped smile. “Wonderful. Please feel free to see yourself out.”   
  


The rain had not let up any during Nolan’s time inside. Night had fallen hard and fast; the faint grey evening light he’d used to find the mayor’s house in the first place was no longer around to guide him back to town.

He wouldn’t have taken any of the three council members up on an offer to lead him to the inn, but he felt a sharp pang of annoyance that none of them had even offered. Hell, he’d even have taken the mayor offering Fenrick up as a guide. Nolan would’ve turned Fenrick down the same as any of them, but, really.

Out of the haze of battle, as uneven the battle had been against the giant fish, Nolan’s eyesight was returning to normal, _fallible_ levels. The rain and the dark really did make it almost impossible to see; he was glad he’d thought to ask for a place to stay in Frog’s Mouth. It would’ve been miserable to find someplace in the woods past the town to set up a campsite. It was still miserable now, forcing his sodden self through muddy pathways in the barely-there glow of the town’s distant lights. His boots were, uncomfortably, still full of water, and moving them through the mud made his feet feel wet in a way he was just not a fan of.

There was a chance that, if the councilman hadn’t been there, the mayor and councilwoman would have strongly encouraged Nolan not to stay in the inn. If it had come to it he could’ve just paid for his own night there, he supposed; but it was insulting when the people who hired him didn’t offer him a safe place to rest after he completed his job. It reminded him that they didn’t think he _needed_ rest, not really.

It reminded him that while all of them knew at least one other person with magic, his was the sort they saw as inhuman. Believing he was otherworldly all the time just made it easier to reason their petty cruelty. Nolan thought they couldn’t possibly believe all the things they claimed to, about him. No one could really be convinced that his magic made it easier for him to survive all things. He could only survive monsters; sometimes it felt like he could only barely do that.

Nolan could tell he looked a mess once he got nearer to town and had the merry orange lights of the inn’s windows in his line of sight. His sword, at least, had been placed back in its sheath; and the sideways rain had been helpful enough to wash the worst of the monster blood off of him. He only looked like a drowned rat, not some other horror.

Still, he wasn’t pleased to make his entrance soaked to the bone, hair unattractively plastered to his skull. He felt cold enough to know he was whiter than a sheet. He swung the door open, cautious, almost; the sudden burst of warm sent high color to his face. He hated _that_ more than he’d have hated looking pale as the dead. It couldn’t be helped. If an overly flushed face was the price Nolan had to pay to feel his feet again, he supposed he’d make do.

The councilman had claimed that the inn always had open rooms. But the tavern on the ground floor of the inn was bursting with people. He cast a wary gaze around and was glad, at least, that none of the patrons seemed overly bothered with his arrival. Despite his stature, he didn’t cut a very imposing figure looking like an idiot who’d just walked to town through the rain. He could spot at least four other people in the tavern who looked just as soaked as he did. It might yet take them some time to realize what he was, and grow wary of him.

Now, to find Lisbet. If only he knew what the fuck she looked like. He hadn’t had to talk to anybody who worked in the inn when he left his horse at their stables, and now he was fucked.

Nolan ventured a few steps deeper into the tavern, hoping to catch someone who seemed … important, maybe, or at the least like she knew what she was doing. There was a rather young woman setting a tray of steaming bowls down at the edge of a bench, grinning prettily at the group of people seated there waiting for her. Nolan saw her giggle at something one of the men said and determined that she couldn’t be Lisbet; Nolan didn’t know who Lisbet was or what she looked like or where the hell she was, but he’d decided that she wasn’t the sort of woman who could be distracted. Lisbet got shit _done_. The pretty barmaid doling food out to teasing patrons seemed to get shit done as a sort of incidental thing, only. That was fine; not everyone could be Lisbet.

Most of the tavern was laid out in an orderly fashion; tables and benches aligned neatly, if a little crowded, throughout the place. It was packed. He wondered if it always looked like this, or if the gloom of the rain drove townspeople to some warm, communal space.

The uniformity of the tavern was only broken up by a cluster of people near the big fireplace that dominated one wall of the tavern. There, Nolan could see tables and benches and chairs all shoved close together around … something. Someone, maybe. Sound rose and fell, loud gasps and laughter coming from all around the tavern, really, but coming stronger from the cluster of people by the fireplace. He couldn’t see what was causing the fuss and, for the moment, he didn’t care to investigate.

But maybe he let his gaze snag there a little too long; Nolan hadn’t heard anyone approach him, not over the consistent murmur in the tavern, but he did hear them clear their throat at his elbow.

“Can I help you?”

Nolan wasn’t a huge fan of hyperbole or anything but he thought this woman was the shortest person he’d ever met. She didn’t even come up to his shoulders, fuck. Her hair, dark curls shot through with grey and piled high on her head through means of magic or, like, the grace of the gods or something, added at least a couple of inches that were desperately needed. He blinked at her, half turned to face her head on, and tried to figure out if she was the illusive Lisbet. “Uh, maybe,” he said. He’d meant for that to be a question but instead had a feeling it came out flat as hell. He blinked again real slow and tried to will his frozen brain into working order. “Are you — uh, are you Lisbet? I was told to talk to Lisbet.”

She blinked at him then. Good. It was always nice to not be the only one on uneven footing. “Who the fuck else would I be?”

Nolan shrugged. He didn’t know if she’d appreciate him saying that he had no clue who the fuck else she’d be, since he knew four people _tops_ in Frog’s Mouth, and still thought that was four people too many. “I don’t really know who the fuck else you’d be,” he said, almost against his better judgement. He didn’t really believe that honesty was the best policy or whatever, but he was also too tired to lie to maybe-Lisbet. “I know maybe four people in this town.”

She appeared to take this information in with startling good grace. She hummed, a considering sound, and gave Nolan a sweeping onceover. He was reminded that he was soaking wet and deathly pale and also, you know, unfortunately flushed. He could feel the color on his face spreading to mottle his jaw, his ears, his neck, under her steady and judging gaze. “You’re the monster hunter, then.”

“And you’re Lisbet.” He wasn’t half as sure of his guess as she seemed to be of hers. “… the mayor and, like, two other people told me to tell you that they were sending me to you, or something.” Nolan shrugged and reveled in how awful the movement felt in frozen, wet clothes. “My horse is in your stables.”

Lisbet was still looking at him, a little judgmental. “Well, if your horse is here.”

It almost physically pained Nolan to have to make his case here. She wasn’t giving him an inch; he could not stress enough how much he would like to be given an inch just, you know, once in his life. “And I’m pretty sure my packs're here, too. For like, a change of clothes, or whatever.” He definitely wasn’t just imagining that the judgement in her gaze intensified. He could almost _hear_ her thinking that he really needed that change of clothes. Look, if he had to be judged to get offered a room in the town he’d just saved from a really, really dumb fish monster, then — fine. At this point in his life, Nolan was not half as picky as he’d once been. He would take the judgement; maybe, at this rate, she’d judge him so hard it circled around to a kind of pity that let her just send him up to a room where he could change in peace.

“I _am_ Lisbet, for the record, and this is _my_ inn and tavern. Tell the mayor — “

“I honestly hope we never speak again, actually,” Nolan mumbled. She spoke over him and he thought that maybe that was for the best. There was a lot of emotion in her voice and it struck him as suddenly vital that the full force of it wasn’t turned on him.

“ — tell the mayor that I do not _appreciate_ him offering up rooms in my inn without my say so. But just this _once_ , since you’re already _here_ , I suppose you can stay. I’ll send your pack up to a room, while you get something to eat and a place in front of the fire.” She finished her declaration off with a truly pitying look. Yeah; Nolan had a decent sense for which way people’s judgement of him was going to lean, at this point.

Given that Lisbet here was the person standing between him sleeping on a bed and him sleeping in a damp tent in the woods, he’d take pity over some of the other things he’d seen judgement sour into. “Thanks,” he mumbled again, shirking eye contact now that he didn’t need to use so much of it to prove he was worth giving a room to. He could hear the innkeeper let out a really monumental sigh and sensed, with his normal human senses, even, that she was rolling her eyes at him. He scuffed a sodden boot against the tavern’s floors and glanced up, quick and uncomfortable, before darting his gaze back around the place. “I’ll just, uh,” and he was saved by Lisbet cutting him off.

“I’ll send Yvelle over with soup. Go sit down, now.”

Nolan found it easy to just do what he was told. He finally got more than a few steps past the door, and was pleasantly surprised that no one seemed to have heard his interaction with Lisbet; still he was receiving no more attention than anyone else in the tavern, despite the fact that near everyone here seemed to know each other and he was a stranger. Frog’s Mouth didn’t strike him as a sought-after travel destination (it was, after all, no West Anslya of the famed fussy-fibered rugs), but they must’ve been used to some traffic if he didn’t catch any notice in their midst.

He’d gotten some wary gazes on his initial arrival to the town, him and his horse both laden down with gear and weapons. And he’d seen people watch him make his way to the mayor’s house, covered in blood and holding a giant fish’s fin. There was some anonymity afforded to him here and now by virtue of having absolutely nothing on his person, aside from the sheathed sword and heavy purse strapped to his belt, and the night’s worth of rain on the rest of him. There were several people here already in a similar state. It was nearing storm season for Frog’s Mouth. He probably looked as normal as he ever could, seeking warm food and a bed at the inn during some rain.

Nolan squeezed between two crowded tables, the last of the orderly layout before the room delved into chaos near the fire. Now that he was closer to it, he could see that everyone was gathered around one guy; sitting on a table, not a chair or bench or anything, waving his hands around as his mouth moved non-stop. He didn’t look that interesting. Nolan couldn’t even parse what he was saying over the adoring murmurs of the crowd he’d amassed. It was like he was holding court.

The man was dressed far more ridiculously than anyone else Nolan had seen commanding so much attention; and he looked, if not actually wet now, like he had been drenched by Frog’s Mouth’s rain too. Like, maybe, he hadn’t bothered to do anything to dry aside from park himself in front of the fire. He was bedraggled, and didn’t even seem to care.

Nolan was instantly annoyed that this guy had chosen such a prime drying spot; people were gathered around him like he _was_ the fire, and they were moths, or some other creature that longed for things that burned.

All the seats around the fire were taken. There were a couple of empty, chairless tables shoved to the edge of their little gathering; like being close to this dude had mattered more than having a place to set down their mugs. Nolan squinted at the guy, now wildly gesticulating, seemingly in the middle of making some point. “ — And she told him, that’s why you should never go there without some backup, _right_ , take a buddy … “

Nolan wondered if he was, like, a preacher; if maybe the good people of Frog’s Mouth got religious in a corner of their tavern on random storming nights. Now that Nolan was actively looking at him, he saw a beaten up lute resting by the guy’s feet; thank the gods he wasn’t playing it, at least.

Weariness from fighting the giant fish and small-talking it up with the mayor was finally catching up with him and Nolan was loath to move any more than he absolutely had to. But he wasn’t like the people gathered closest to the fire. He’d kind of like to have both a seat and a table; if he wanted to claim one of the discarded tables, he’d need to pull a chair from elsewhere in the tavern to it. He spared a second to be infinitely jealous of people who had the sort of benign, practical magic that let them move things with a thought. It seemed a far more useful thing to have than the ability to just … not be murdered by monsters.

How many monsters did the regular person run into, anyway? He bet people who could move things with a thought didn’t even _hear_ of enough monsters to covet his magic for a second, the lucky bastards.

Nolan wove around the crowded tavern once again, to get a bench or stool and weave his way back to his table of choice, lugging it with him as he went. By the time he settled a sturdy wooden seat at the empty table of his choice, he was beat. He spared a second to remove his sword and payment from his belt, setting both heavy items on the table in front of him. If Nolan didn’t know that there was a room waiting for him once he ate, he’d have been sorely tempted to rest his head on the table next to his stuff and pass out.

It was _really_ tempting. He couldn’t bring himself to actually pay attention to whatever the guy was saying, in case it actually _was_ some sort of sermon. But something about the cadence of his voice was soothing. Before Nolan knew it, the pretty barmaid he’d seen earlier was setting a steaming bowl of some sort of stew in front of him, a nervous smile on her face. No doubt Lisbet had told her who Nolan was. He didn’t really have the energy to entertain the giggling flirting he’d witnessed her bestow on the other patrons; but it was annoying nonetheless to see her so on edge just from looking at him. He muttered a quick thank you and didn’t watch her scurry away from him.

Almost mechanically, Nolan began shoveling food into his mouth with the wooden spoon provided with the bowl. It was good stew, so that was something. Lisbet didn’t seem like the type to send him something awful, or barely edible, just to make a point. Not when she’d already conceded to letting him stay in her inn and seemed more upset with the mayor for that than with Nolan himself. But it’d happened in other towns, once or twice, and he couldn’t ever really forget.

Frog’s Mouth wasn’t any place Nolan was dying to return to, but he’d been through far worse places in this kingdom alone.

Exhaustion was finally catching up with him; he could feel a headache coming on, sharp pulses of pain throbbing over his eyebrow in time with his pulse. This was fast becoming part of his routine, too. _Get hired, fight monsters, get paid, headache, rest, repeat_. All Nolan could do was hurry up and finish eating, maybe see if that alleviated anything, and then try and find Lisbet again so he could figure out what room she’d sent his shit to. The sooner he ate and changed and slept, the sooner he could leave Frog’s Mouth come morning.

He didn’t have another job lined up after their sea monster, so he figured he’d have to make the quick journey back to the capitol. Loiter about, generally make it be known that he was for hire again.

He hadn’t been back there in a while — not by design, not really, but he was surprised that a small part of him actually missed it. Nolan wasn’t a fan of being on the road. He wasn’t a fan of talking about how he _felt_ about things, either; but he knew that if anyone ever asked how he felt about all the travel that came with hunting monsters he’d have a list of complaints ready to go. It was easily the most unpleasant part of a job that had him regularly aching and bloody at the end of the day.

The king’s keep and the city surrounding it at least offered a hub and the kind of stability that came from familiarity alone. He knew some people there. He knew where he was welcome. He could walk the busy streets and feel assured that he wasn’t the most interesting or terrifying thing people had seen that week.

Nolan wasn’t sure if it was the food settling in his stomach or the knowledge that Frog’s Mouth was his last tiny town for a small while, but things around him seemed to grow calmer. His head still ached but he imagined the noise in the tavern lessened some. He could actually hear the faint crackle of the merry fireplace warming his left side; it was nice.

“Hey,” someone said, cutting into that illusion right away.

Nolan flicked his gaze up to the source of the voice and blinked in evenly concealed surprise. Lute guy stood hovering near his table, the flock he’d been preaching to evidently dispersed back through Lisbet’s tavern. That explained the sudden calm — it hadn’t been the healing powers of stew, or the promise of a city on his horizons. The annoying chatter and gasps and laughter just finally let up to normal levels without this guy stoking them to a frenzy. Nolan had let himself be lulled by the rhythm of this guy’s words when he first sat down, but now his original annoyance was returning. What the hell could he want?

“What the hell do you want?” That seemed a decent way to find out. His question only made the guy smile wider as he shoved his disheveled hair back from his face. Maybe he took Nolan responding at all like some sort of invitation, because before he answered Nolan’s question, the man was pulling a loose chair up to Nolan’s table and settling his beat up lute next to Nolan’s sword.

Once seated, his grin settled to something a little less obnoxious. “You seemed like you missed the beginning of my story, s’all. Wanted to see if it made any sense without that bit.”

Nolan narrowed his eyes at the guy, sprawling out in his chair at Nolan’s table like the two of them were old friends. Nolan had run into more than a few strange preachers in strange towns, but this guy’s actions didn’t remind him of any of them. And _story_ didn’t really imply that he considered it his mission to spread word of Ista’s miracles to everyone he met. When Nolan first noticed him, the confirmation that he wasn’t a preacher would’ve been mildly reassuring. Now, it only made Nolan more wary.

Sitting at a stranger’s table in a tavern was some serious persistence, when the stranger was telegraphing pretty obvious _don’t fucking talk to me_ vibes. Especially when you and the stranger both knew full well there were plenty of people in the tavern who’d gladly invite you to their table.

“I wasn’t listening to your story at all,” Nolan said, settling for bored dismissal. He brought another spoonful of stew up to his mouth and worked at ignoring the guy as best he could.

He wasn’t very _good_ at ignoring him. Out of the corner of his eye, Nolan saw his brows draw together. Consternation or confusion or some combination of the two, he couldn’t say. “Not even once you got over here? Everyone was getting pretty into it.”

“Yeah, well, I was getting pretty into getting dry,” Nolan muttered.

He toyed with his spoon a little, scraping around the bottom of the bowl and the last of his stew. For a second he glanced sideways and saw lute guy looking at him. Nolan wondered if he was just now realizing that most of Nolan was still pretty soaked; the fire had done something to help him out, but he still felt like if someone squeezed him they’d wring out a lake’s worth of water. It was the second time that night he’d had someone give him a serious onceover. This dude was no Lisbet, she of the judgemental gaze, but Nolan could feel the color on his cheeks deepening under his watch. He fiddled with the spoon a little more before deciding the guy’s staring was his own problem. Hurried, to finish up as quickly as possible, Nolan wolfed down the last of his food.

The burst of motion seemed to have startled Nolan’s companion. “You do look pretty soaked, yeah. That storm surprise you half as much as it did me?”

Nolan shrugged. “Well, I was in the water when it started, so. No. Y’could see the clouds coming in for ages before anything even happened.”

Lute guy just blinked at him again, nodding with a hand momentarily pressed to the scruff under his chin. He shook himself off. “Like on a boat?”

“No, like, standing in the water.”

He nodded at this new information. Nolan knew full well his flat tone made even honest statements like that one sound sarcastic; in fact, he relied on that sometimes. Some serious good could come out of saying true things and having people decide you couldn’t mean them. But for some reason, lute guy here was taking him full on his word. He didn’t seem to doubt for a second that Nolan really had been standing fully immersed in the sea. “What the hell were you doing in the water, bud?”

Nolan blinked again at the guy, meeting his oddly-colored eyes head on. In the flattest tone Nolan could manage, he said, “Killing the least exciting sea monster I’ve ever met.”

There sure was something about startling someone into silence. Nolan cocked his head sideways to look at the guy and to watch him process that. He wondered how quickly he was putting together that Nolan was a monster hunter; if his sword and his clothes all in black were doing anything to aid in the revelation. The more Nolan watched him obviously think things over, the more certain he was that this wasn’t a priest of Ista. Nolan hadn’t met one of those who knew how to, like, stop acting like nothing surprised them. The lute was probably the biggest clue Nolan had as to what this guy’s deal was; but he really, really didn’t want to admit he was having a prolonged conversation with a bard.

Still. He couldn’t think of what _else_ he could be, if not a bard or preacher, that explained his sheer persistence. In all his processing of Nolan’s monster hunter status, Nolan didn’t seem him tense up in nervousness once.

“How unexciting are we talking here?”

All the probing definitely felt like bard territory. For fuck’s sake; Nolan broke eye contact to send a searching look through the tavern, but he couldn’t see either Lisbet or Yvelle anymore. There was no convenient excuse to leave the guy and figure out where his room was. Without looking back at the bard, Nolan shrugged. “It mostly just looked a … carp, maybe, but twice as tall as me, with a gods-awful amount of teeth. Long ones, too, fuck. Nothing particularly special about it, aside from those.”

The bard just kept looking at Nolan and it took everything he had to keep from squirming under the weight of his attention. He wasn’t a talker, really. But in nearly every conversation he’d had today, the other parties let pauses fester long enough that he _considered_ saying some other stupid thing just to fill the silence. And the thing was, he didn’t even have to take it from this guy. He wasn’t offering him a job and then paying him for it, like the town’s council, and he wasn’t the person who could deny him a place to stay if he misspoke, like Lisbet. He was just some nosy fuck who’d claimed prime fireside real estate in the tavern and decided to bother Nolan for being on the fringes of his territory. Nolan could up and leave this conversation whenever he wanted; he didn’t have to stick around and wait for more of an inquisition to come —

“I mean, you said unexciting, but that sounds pretty cool looking to me,” the guy mused, tone and gaze thoughtful as he cut into Nolan’s internal diatribe. Nolan squinted at him a little before giving a minute shake of his head.

“No, it was lame as shit,” Nolan said, all slow-like. He wondered if this guy was choosing not to get a very simple fact about the stupid giant fish, namely, that it was stupid.

It all felt very simple to Nolan and he wasn’t sure how else he could drive that point home. The bard just shrugged one shoulder up, nonchalant as you please. “Oh, come on. A giant fish, with giant teeth? That sounds pretty fun.”

“It literally wasn’t, though. I don’t get hired to kill fun things.”

The bard leaned back in his seat, sprawling his legs and arms out and taking up far more space than Nolan thought was strictly necessary. He didn’t look like that big a guy. He didn’t need to kick his legs out until one of his feet was dangerously close to getting even more mud on Nolan’s pants. “Right, so like, I get that, I guess. But I mean, I don’t get why they would even hire you to kill something lame, either?”

He paused and made some intense eye contact with Nolan. Nolan scowled at him and the bard nodded like that acknowledgement was all he needed to keep going. “If it’s really that lame it wouldn’t be a threat and like, not worth hiring someone over, I think. You’re probably just, whatever, like, desensitized to really cool monsters and shit. I bet the carp with the ungodly amount of teeth was cool and you’re just being stubborn here.”

There was kind of a point in all that. Nolan was pissed that this guy made any sense. His general vibe screamed that he shouldn’t make sense; no one with a lute _that_ fucked up and a vest _that_ shade of green should ever make sense. “I’m the only one who actually saw it and I say it was lame. Pretty sure that makes you wrong, here.” Nolan shrugged again and slouched as much as he could in the tavern’s sturdy wooden seat. “Plus, I even said that it was the most uninteresting sea monster _I’d_ seen. It’s implied, like implicitly or whatever, that that’s an opinion.”

The bard nodded. Nolan chose to read some acquiescence in that. “Alright, then, what’s the most interesting sea monster you’ve ever met? What beats a giant fucking fish with huge teeth?”

Nolan glanced through the tavern again and still didn’t see either Lisbet or Yvelle around. Nothing would save him from this conversation, he was pretty sure. Nolan had made it through having his whole life turned upside down when he realized monsters couldn’t kill him, only to be done in by one annoyingly persistent bard. It felt, in its own way, fitting — the universe could never cut Nolan a break.

He sighed. “I’ve fought a sea dragon. And a sea serpent. And a giant octopus that had teeth hidden in its tentacles. And a group of bipedal fish creatures who had a fucking vendetta against this one family, once, they were a bitch to fight. And — “

“Alright, alright, point fucking made, man,” the bard said, effectively cutting Nolan off. Thank the gods. He could have gone on further; maybe he’d have had to stray from sea monsters to any water-based creature, but still, he could have. Would’ve sucked to, though.

“Yeah, well. The giant fish? Lame. And a pain in the ass. I got caught in the rain because that thing was too stupid to just let me kill it in peace.”

Nolan felt a half-forgotten pang of sympathy for the giant fish monster. He still thought, privately, that it hadn’t been born a monster; it was just a regular fish that had fallen victim to some kid’s stupid, cruel magic. Transformation stuff always gave its wielders a power trip. Nolan hadn’t met a single person who had primarily transformation-based magic and _wasn’t_ a raging asshole, or else, a reformed asshole. The fish was just a fish who was trying to figure out how to live now that it was suddenly giant with overlarge, oversharp teeth and eyes that glowed. Maybe it would’ve eventually learned not to take bites out of people.

In any case, part of its body would forever be stuck as a trophy in the mayor’s house. That was punishment enough. Nolan didn’t want to keep speaking ill of it, too.

“It didn’t want to die, I guess. It didn’t seem to be doing anything with malice, but like. It was trying to eat people, so,” Nolan mumbled. He shifted in his seat and finally pushed away his empty bowl, its spoon rattling inside it with the motion. The table looked really fucking crowded, with Nolan’s sword and the purse filled with his payment and the bard’s beat up lute and an empty bowl. He wondered if it was rude to have so much shit on the table. Maybe Lisbet was avoiding him because she could see he was being rude. Gods fucking damn it. “I did what the town asked me to do.”

The bard nodded. He seemed almost sage; he wore wisdom like a borrowed coat and Nolan was startled to find himself almost soothed by it. He mentally recoiled; he _really_ needed to get some sleep, and soon.

“A giant fish might not be as smart as a whole clan of bloodthirsty fish people. So I guess it checks out that he was scared enough to put up a dumb fight.”

Nolan blinked. “Yeah, I guess.”

He scrubbed a hand over his eyes. The pain in his head hadn’t gone away with food. He was happy he’d gotten to eat, and the stew had been, like, top notch. But he was cold and tired and a little miserable. He didn’t want to have a prolonged talk with some bard he didn’t know about how the Frog’s Mouth’s giant fish problem stacked up against other things Nolan had killed. It wasn’t, like, polite conversation, and he was honestly a little shocked at himself for rolling with it for so long. Exhaustion really fucked him up.

People didn’t really like it when he talked about the things he killed. No one wanted them around, either — he got hired to kill them for a reason. But to talk about it after, that was crossing the line. He’d only been talking to the bard for a short while, and it seemed like there wasn't really a line _there_ for him like there was for most people. Nolan liked the line, though, as a general rule. Shutting up about the things he did got people to relax around him sometimes. He could only feel really normal in select company and he wasn’t about to start running his mouth about killing monsters to ensure that select company was all he ever got. The bard was overly relaxed and was an anomaly and Nolan knew he shouldn’t entertain him, even half asleep.

“Listen — “ Nolan cut himself off and wondered where he was going with any of this. “I need to find my room.”

The bard nodded, a quick movement as easy and practiced as any of his others. “No, yeah, of course. I’ll leave you to sort that out. Hey,” he said, reaching out to clasp a hand over Nolan’s shoulder. “Thanks for talking this out with me, man.”

“Uh, no problem.” Nolan blinked slow and confused. He didn’t know what about their conversation warranted thanks. He hadn’t sure as fuck hadn’t answered the question the bard had approached him to ask. Part of him wanted to shake this guy’s hand off, and a larger part was too tired to bother. Strangers never really touched him; everything about his interaction with this guy was baffling, uncharted territory, down to this odd farewell. Nolan wasn’t nearly awake enough to be upset at a polite shoulder-clasping anyway. His touch was warm, at least. Nolan’s shoulder was freezing, same as the rest of him, and even through his still-damp shirt the touch was hot.

He nodded once at Nolan, a sharp, final thing, and let his hand drift away to grab his lute. That was it. As quickly as he’d joined Nolan, he walked away. There was a bounce in his step as he sat at some other party’s table. Nolan could hear his chatter pick up again, words indistinct and just as meandering as they’d been with Nolan. He gave himself a moment to steep in his lingering confusion before he, too, shook himself off. He wasn’t nearly awake enough for _any_ of this. 

Nolan gathered his own possessions off the table. He took a second to affix sword and purse both to his belt again. Hopefully, he’d be changing as soon as he figured out what room he was staying in, but he felt better moving around with them on his person instead of in his hands. Before he left his table Nolan made sure to set his empty bowl at the edge of it. The least he could do was make it easier on Yvelle when she came around this side of the room later. Nolan followed his earlier path through the tavern; it was a little less packed now, but the tables were no less crowded together than when Nolan had first arrived. He twisted himself between two benches, haphazardly shoved away from a table, and saw Lisbet perk up from a seat behind the bar.

Not to keep harping on her height, or anything, but, fuck. Nolan hadn’t even seen her over the bar, with the way she’d been slouched before. He wasn’t sure that was an effective way to let patrons of the tavern know there was something there to serve ‘em drinks, but whatever, it was fine. Not his tavern. 

He made a beeline towards her, now that she knew where she was. It still took him a while to reach her; his limbs were moving slow now, a little delayed as he fought through exhaustion and the lingering ache in his head and the labyrinthine maze of tables left behind as the night wore on. When he got to the bar, he was immeasurably relieved that she spoke up first. “Now, we’ve got your belongings set up in a room upstairs.” She jerked her head to the side. Nolan flicked his gaze to follow the movement and made note that, yeah, those were stairs. He was so close to being able to get out of his wet clothes. _So close he could taste it_ — except his senses weren’t at all enhanced now, so he couldn’t, actually. “It’ll be the last room on the left of the hall, the one with the door propped open. Be a dear and take the rock in the doorway inside with you when we get there. Our steward trips over the door stops when they’re left outside.”

Nolan hadn’t seen a steward; really, he hadn’t seen any staff aside from Yvelle and Lisbet herself. He wondered if the steward only worked late at night, when the torches in the hallway weren’t kept lit and there was genuine danger of falling on your ass in the dark.

“Thanks,” Nolan said, instead of voicing any of that. “And — in the morning, is there a stablehand I need to pay for looking after my horse?”

Lisbet shook her head. “Some of the local kids take shifts with the stables for a bit of extra coin, but we don’t employ a steady stablehand. There probably won’t be anyone there when you get her in the morning.”

Part of Nolan wanted to cringe thinking about some teenager looking after Snow. Seeing the giant fish hadn’t inspired a great deal of faith in Nolan about the way Frog’s Mouth’s teenagers treated animals; he had no _proof_ of his theory, but it felt right, and Nolan was just stubborn enough to stick to it. He trusted Lisbet, though. Lisbet seemed like good people. He was sure she was careful about the kids she let be associated with her establishment; she was ready to fistfight the mayor earlier when she heard she spoke for the inn in her stead. If that was her with the mayor, Nolan couldn’t imagine her letting the kids she hired fuck things up for her patrons.

Again, though, he wasn’t going to voice any of that. “Alright. Well, uh, thanks, then.”

She nodded at him, a little absent. He saw her spot someone over his shoulder before she turned to grab a tankard and begin filling it with some honey colored ale. Nolan couldn’t begin to guess what time it was; still early enough in the evening to drink, he supposed. But he was bone tired from the events of the day, so much so it was making it feel later to him. He couldn’t imagine drinking now.

“Lovely Lisbet,” a voice said from behind Nolan. “You’re the best, d’you know that?” He tensed. He hated having people approach him from behind. He’d seen Lisbet see someone walk over and knew that he could have, theoretically, half-turned to avoid having his back exposed to them, but his body was working on a delay from his mind. It just didn’t happen.

The voice was familiar, though. Nolan tossed a glance over his shoulder and wasn’t at all surprised that the bard he’d spoken to earlier was the one getting a drink. Nolan just couldn’t shake him. He smiled at Nolan when they made eye-contact; Nolan did not smile back, but he nodded, a near-imperceptible thing. Lisbet looked at the bard with a soft, amused smile; and there it was. It was always strange to watch the _shift_ in people when they interacted with other people. Normal people — who didn’t have magic, or else had a magic that was small and easier to deal with. Whose magic didn’t change their bodies just to use it. Lisbet had been perfectly polite to Nolan all evening. He wouldn’t’ve guessed she was treating him any different from any other guest in her inn, until he saw her soften just like that.

She probably wasn’t doing it on purpose. That was something she had in her favor; Frog’s Mouth might not be the sort of place Nolan wanted to return to, but as innkeepers went, Lisbet was one of the better ones Nolan’s met.

He turned back to her and said, “I’ll just head upstairs, then.”

The bard clumsily sidled up next to him, leaned against the bar and asked, “Oh, you found your room, then?”

Lisbet slid the bard’s drink to him and answered the question for Nolan; he’d guessed before meeting her that she was the sort of person who got shit done and he was glad to see he’d been right. He was glad to be spoken for, too. She might not have softened around Nolan like she did at the bard — didn’t soften around him at all, but who would? It was something that she’d noticed he didn’t mind not having to talk. “I told him where we’re putting him, yeah.”

Hell, he might return to Frog’s Mouth eventually just to stay in Lisbet’s inn. The thought filled him with distant horror that he was so starved for just, like, normal human interaction that Lisbet _not_ being an ass was enough to make him want to visit this miserable seaside town again.

Contrary to whatever sort of shit people wanted to say about monster hunters in general, Nolan was polite. His family’d have eaten him alive long before he learned he could survive monsters if he’d been an asshole, growing up. So he glanced back at Lisbet and muttered a quick, “Thanks,” in her direction before jutting another barely-there nod at the bard and making his escape towards the stairs. He couldn’t wait to change into something dry and fall face-first into a bed. In the morning, he’d collect Snow from the stables and muddle his way through an uncomfortable parting conversation with Lisbet, and then he’d take off for the capitol.

Once he was away from this place, he wouldn’t have the urge to visit Frog’s Mouth just because their inn hadn’t been terrible.

Nolan clomped his way up the stairs on sodden boots and repeated that loose schedule like a mantra. He repeated it as he scooped up the rock propping open his door and entered his room. He repeated the directions of it to himself, through tearing his clothes off and placing them in front of the small fireplace in the room, though putting on dry clothes and scrubbing a tired hand over his eyes. There was a small pitcher of water and a bowl near the window. He shoved some over his face, his hair. It was refreshing, but he didn’t feel any more awake now. Instead it was just like he’d finally scrubbed the last of the fight from him.

Nolan let the pattern of his thoughts follow tomorrow’s schedule as he shoved his packs off the small, straw-filled bed and onto the floor. By the time he crawled onto the bed himself, his thoughts were a well-worn path; indistinct, and hazy, and comfortable. The room was warm. Nolan himself was dry, and he no longer smelled so strongly of the sea. Every little thing felt like a luxury this close to dreaming. On top of being warm and dry now, destined to leave Frog's Mouth come morning, he'd gotten to talk stuff out with someone. He so rarely got to talk about the things he was _left_ with when he killed a monster. The bard wouldn't have been Nolan's first choice, but he was on the precipice of sleep. He couldn't stop himself from being grateful for their conversation now that it was over. 

He’d ended many nights in far worse ways than this. Between one thought and the next, he was asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i finished writing this _literally_ as OT was ending. feels like a sign, or something. hope y'all enjoy!!

Nolan had been in the capitol a week before he started putting in any real effort towards finding another job. He wasn’t — it wouldn’t have been wholly accurate to say he was _avoiding_ the places where he’d found jobs before. Nolan was a creature of habit at his core and hung around the same establishments he always hung around when he was in the city. It wasn’t like he didn’t _want_ to get another job or two lined up; as nice as it was to dick around in a place so packed with people his presence didn’t cause too much of a stir, he wasn’t that good at sitting idle for too long.

The capitol was a fine place to unwind after weeks, verging on months, traveling, but it wasn’t a home, really. And that was why no matter how often Nolan returned to it, eventually he’d leave again.

There was a specific look people expected from monster hunters. They weren’t like blacksmiths or bakers who always needed an apron, or like knights with their armor, but people expected them all to dress alike anyway. Pretty much every other monster hunter Nolan had come into contact with was like him: it didn’t matter what they wore or what they did, if they encountered a monster, it would not (could not) hurt them. He could survive a monster attack wearing nothing just as easily as he could survive an attack wearing full plate armor.

It wasn’t an aspect of their magic that was a secret, either. People knew. But they still were more likely to clock him as what he was if he was wearing all black; sometimes, if the people hiring him had really open minds, he could even get away with wearing various shades of grey.

As ridiculous as it was, it made it easier to blend when he didn’t want to be sought after. He had a small apartment near the port of the city he maintained even during his months on the road, and in his small apartment he kept pieces of his wardrobe from before he’d come into his magic. Brightly colored shirts or trousers and sumptuously embroidered jackets were enough to keep people from guessing what he was. They were enough to tell the people that _already_ knew that he wasn’t in the mood to be a monster hunter that day. In the city surrounding the king’s keep, Nolan knew there had to be dozens upon dozens of children of minor nobles who dressed just the same as Nolan did and spent time gallivanting around the city.

Granted, children of nobles didn’t keep rooms near the port, but that was fine. He didn’t need people to think he _was_ one, even if that would have been true in its way; he just needed them not to think too hard about what he actually was. Blending in was, in its own way, an easy feat.

There was a weight off his shoulders when he wore a finely tailored coat in violet to talk to the fish vendor near his apartment. She always gave him more than he asked her for and patted his cheeks when he deliberately overpaid; he thought, by now, she might do the same if he visited her dressed in black leather. But it felt kinder to both of them to pretend he wasn’t what he was.

There was a tavern a few streets over from his apartment in the city, just two streets over from the fish vendor, whose proprietor both knew what Nolan was and welcomed his business anyway — it didn’t matter if he did wear dark leather or brightly dyed wool. He was a little _too_ interested in Nolan’s monster hunting sometimes; if there’d been a long enough stretch of time between Nolan’s visits to the tavern, he’d badger Nolan for details, expecting tales of valiance, or at least something interesting he could then go and tell other patrons later on down the line. He was good, at least, at concealing his disappointment when Nolan only complained about the cold, or the smell, or the minute annoyances of whatever fight he was fresh off of.

He figured the guy had to know by now that Nolan was doing it partly on purpose. That he knew that and was still always chill with Nolan when he came in said a lot. The first visit Nolan had paid him since Frog’s Mouth, Nolan just complained about how useless the giant fish’s teeth had been, and how annoying it was to get caught in the rain because of it.

There were ways to make things sound more exciting than they were, or more exciting than he _thought_ they were, at least. He just wasn’t ever in the mood to.

It was a week almost to the day from his arrival to the city; a week and a day since he’d left Frog’s Mouth. A week of keeping to himself, save for meals and the occasional walk through the city for the sake of getting outside. Autumn was fading fast and there was something about the bright sting in the air mixed with people’s cheer as they came closer and closer to the solstice and all the festivals it brought. Nolan donned one of the thicker jackets he wore when on the job and strapped his favored sword to his back before venturing outside, letting all the black of his ensemble do most of the work of conveying what he was. He didn’t walk any different when he was playing the role of monster hunter. He didn’t stand any taller, thank the gods. People just seemed to be able to tell, anyway.

It was why he liked the city. They knew, but there was little to do about it most of the time. It was hard to cross the road from someone you suspected of being a monster hunter when the streets were so crowded with vendors and workers and travelers; Nolan didn’t see much of an immediate difference. It was late afternoon and people had too much to do besides pay him any mind. It wasn’t until he stepped foot in the tavern, crowded with sailors and merchants coming in for a meal, that he saw anyone take real notice.

“Thank _fuck_ ,” the tavern’s proprietor breathed when he saw Nolan post himself at his usual seat at the bar. “Like, really, thank the gods you’re dressing like that again. Ho _ly_ shit.”

Nolan raised a judging eyebrow at him. He just slid Nolan a plate and a drink without him having to ask, which, in its way, made up for the strange greeting.

“Some of the king’s guys —”

Nolan cut him off. “His knights, Brenfrey? Do you mean his _knights_?”

He waved away Nolan’s question and carried on like he hadn’t spoken at all. Nolan looked at him a while longer before turning to his food; at least he was keeping his voice down. Something told Nolan he didn’t want any curious sailor listening in on this conversation. “Yeah, his guys. Listen, some of them came in maybe a few days before you started showing your face around again and asked me to let them know when you got back. I _could_ have sent word to them right away but I know you like to take your time getting back from your vacations.”

Without looking up, Nolan said, “I’ve never been on a vacation in my life.” Brenfrey just waved him off again. Normally, he didn’t expect Nolan to contribute much to their conversations. All the information he got from Nolan came from questions Nolan answered because he was just polite that way. He waited half a beat to see if he’d get anything else out of Brenfrey before Nolan added, “Well, yeah. Go ahead and send word now, I guess.”

It was a kind of thank you; he was genuinely pleased that Brenfrey hadn’t told the knights Nolan was back as soon as he’d seen him. Brenfrey grinned at Nolan at the permission and waived over the young guy who worked tables during the days. The two of them walked further down the bar from Nolan, just out of earshot, and Nolan turned all his focus back to his meal. A few moments later he saw the young guy tear out of the tavern at a breakneck pace.

Nolan wondered if he was expected to stay here until he got back, or until the knights sent for him. He hadn’t had plans to work on a concrete schedule today — had mostly just planned to wander until someone saw him and flagged him down with a job offer. If he was being honest, half of him had expected someone to notice him in the tavern, anyway. Sailors always had fiends or ghouls they wanted cleared off their boats. It was a standard gig, the way he usually eased himself back into things in the capitol. Getting word that the king and his knights wanted him felt a little more important than getting flagged down by a ship’s captain who has ill-advisedly kept some small faerie in a cage in his cabin.

He felt a little fenced in now that he was in some strange limbo waiting to see if he had a job, here.

He hadn’t had anything to do with the king’s knights in months, when spring was first turning oppressively warm and they needed his help getting rid of an infestation of cockatrices at the royal fields out west. It was too cold now for cockatrices to be causing much of a problem, so he had no earthly idea what they could want from him; the wondering wasn’t something he savored. But he knew, really, that no matter what the job was he wouldn’t turn down getting a hefty paycheck directly from the crown. There was something about working for the king directly, instead of landowners or nobles or town’s elected councils, that made his work feel less shady. It helped that the king was a good guy, mostly; another magic wielder who acted like he’d never been told to stay away from people whose magicks transformed them.

Brenfrey sidled back over to Nolan with an easy gait and a shit-eating grin, wider and cockier than the one he’d given Nolan before sending word back to the knights. Nolan knew he could just _ask_ him if he knew anything about the job he was getting into. Brenfrey would either know or he wouldn’t, and either way he’d tell Nolan plainly.

Nolan decided he was fine spending time in the strange limbo, where he didn’t know if he should stay and wait at the tavern or go home and wait for Brenfrey to send word his way; he could steer the conversation here and distract himself with it, bask in the time he had left before taking on another job.

He cleared his throat. “How’s business?”

If it was possible for an already shit-eating grin to get wider, Brenfrey’s did. Nolan almost immediately regretted his bid at small talk; he should’ve just stuck to staring moodily at his plate and ignoring Brenfrey standing, like, right next to him despite the fact that the tavern was plenty crowded with other patrons he could bother. It would’ve been far more painless. Nolan shifted in his seat, trying not to look discomfited and only marginally succeeding. Brenfrey took a kind of pity on him by answering with a minimum of smarminess. “Business has been good, thanks. A whole fuckin’ host of ships from West Anslya have been coming in these past few weeks and the guys who run those things never notice when you jack up the price of ale for them.”

Nolan snorted as he brought his cup up to his mouth; he smothered the tail end of the sound in taking a drink, but Brenfrey caught it and slapped a hand on the bartop. “If they weren’t so good for business, I’d swear I hated West Anslyans, I _promise_ you,” he said. Nolan cocked his head in mild agreement.

“They’re not the worst, but, yeah. Pretty insufferable.”

One of the sailors walked up to the two of them, giving Nolan an amiable nod before turning to Brenfrey and asking, “Who’s insufferable?”

Nolan shifted a sideways glance at her, taking in her style of dress; it’d be just his luck to get caught shit-talking West Anslyans in front of one, but she looked more Thirish than anything, if she wasn’t actually from Philadra itself. Brenfrey took her tankard from her and turned to fill it up, calling out over his shoulder, “West Anslyans, yeah?”

She laughed and took that as invite enough to the conversation and the seat next to Nolan; he caught her clocking his sword and making sure to set a knife on the bartop between them. “West Anslyans may be insufferable, but they’re not half so boorish as the Berenians. “

Brenfrey shrugged and handed her her cup. “I haven’t come into contact with many Berenians. Nolan, what’s your verdict on them?”

Nolan shrugged. “Boorish might be right, but they’re not, like, actual dicks. They’re rude as hell but in a friendly way, almost, like they just don’t see the point of niceties. They don’t really trade by sea, so.” He paused and looked at Brenfrey, who nodded at the information. “I think in Ravilet, they’re _actual_ bigots, in a way that makes the whole place way worse than either Berenia or West Anslya.”

“Maybe,” the sailor conceded. “West Anslyans only stick their noses up at Philadrans and _East_ Anslyans.”

Nolan raised a brow at Brenfrey and took another drink from his cup; his point was made. It was nice to have backup sometimes, even if he didn’t even know this woman. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her take a mirror pull of her tankard. Brenfrey held his arms up in surrender, smirking sideways at Nolan and the sailor. “How d’you know that about Ravilet anyway, Nolan? I get why _she’d_ know, but I don’t think you should have a reason to go down there at all.”

He sat back in his seat with a groan, pushing his empty plate Brenfrey’s way. He took it from Nolan and walked it to the sink, looking back at Nolan as he went. “God, I fucking hate talking about Ravilet.” Brenfrey cocked his chin up at Nolan, silently telling him to keep talking about it anyway. Nolan sighed. “I was getting rid of some gnolls for a farmer at Thirin’s border. He, I guess, was friendly enough with a neighbor on the other side, in Ravilet, and told them I’d helped out. The neighbor asked me to follow him to his town so they could hire me.”

The sailor was looking sideways at him and finally voiced the suspicion Nolan knew she must’ve had since she first sat down and saw his sword and clothes. “You a monster hunter then?”

He nodded, squinting at her until she nodded back and returned to her drink with practiced nonchalance. It was a pretty obvious question; he wondered if she’d asked just to show that she was fine with it, like her sitting next to him hadn’t proved that on its own. “Anyway, turns out the _monsters_ they wanted me to take care of were just a couple of werewolves traveling through their town to get to the harbor nearby. Those are, like, whole people. They wanted me to murder some travelers who were paying to stay in their inn.”

The sailor whistled through her teeth, looking, somehow, both disgusted and amused. “They thought you’d do that?”

“They don’t think too highly of people like Nolan, either,” Brenfrey answered for Nolan. Nolan jerked his chin at him in silent thanks; Brenfrey nodded back and gestured for Nolan’s tankard, topping him off without a word. The sailor looked at Nolan for confirmation and he shrugged one shoulder, settling further back in his seat. Part of him wanted to keep moving in it until he just slid off it, right to the ground, but he was in this conversation now and it’d be rude to leave it just like that, fuck.

“Yeah,” he mumbled. “Anyone who’s got magic that, like, transforms them when they use it. They don’t even like people with more normal transformation magic.”

Brenfrey shook his head at Nolan, sliding his drink back to him. “You shouldn't have been there in the first place.” He looked, belatedly, a little concerned for Nolan. “If they’d been pissed enough at you for turning down the job, they might’ve tried to kill _you_ themselves.”

“Please.” Nolan scowled at Brenfrey and ignored the sailor’s muffled laugh next to him. “They were fucked up bigots, but they wouldn’t have _killed_ me. They weren’t going to kill those werewolves themselves, they sure as hell wouldn’t have tried touching me.”

The sailor bumped his arm with her elbow, cocking a brow at him when he glanced over at her with a muted glare. “Yeah, but werewolves would actually be hard for them to kill. Aren’t you guys only strong when it’s a monster you’re facing off against?”

“Nolan’s strong all the time,” Brenfrey boasted with a leer in Nolan’s direction. He felt his face heating and glared harder, directing it at both of them now. The sailor just laughed again, not bothering to smother it this time. “Look at this guy and tell me you’d want to face off against him, Vrienna.” Nolan didn’t know what was so funny about that, but it made the sailor – Vrienna, he guessed, what _ever_ – laugh harder. It took maybe two seconds before Brenfrey was busting a gut, too. Nolan rolled his eyes and focused on his drink.

The two of them were still losing their shit over the idea of Nolan being strong, or whatever it was now that there were minutes into their laughing fits, when the young guy Brenfrey had sent out returned, banging the tavern door open with a gust of frigid wind and huffing out labored breaths until he reached Nolan. “Holy shit,” Nolan muttered, looking at him. “Did you run the whole time you were gone?”

“Yeah,” the guy gasped out. “Brenfrey told me to run, so.”

“Gods,” Nolan said. “Well, don’t fucking listen to Brenfrey, then, he’s never run anywhere a day in his life.”

The sailor, next to Nolan, was still doubled over, her shoulders heaving in silent laughter. Brenfrey was still laughing, too, but it was finally dying down to scattered giggles. He didn’t respond at all to Nolan telling his employee to ignore him, just started filling an earthenware cup with water for him. Nolan rolled his eyes again and waited until the guy had gulped down the cup before asking, “So, what did the knights send you back here with?”

He was still panting when he spoke. “It wasn’t the knights, it was a squire at the castle, who told me to tell you they’re at some tavern near the castle and can stay there until you arrive.”

Nolan could see Brenfrey balking out of the corner of his eye, spluttering in incredulity. “Oh, c’mon, it’s not like they’ve never been here. Can’t they come here to Nolan? They’re the one he’d be doing a favor for.”

The guy shrugged and handed his cup to Brenfrey for a refill. Nolan sighed. “It’s not a favor if they’re paying me, Brenfrey.” He slid out of his seat and started bracing himself for a walk towards the castle. “They probably don’t want to have to leave is all. It’s fine. I’ll just — head out now, I guess.”

“Big hotshot, can’t leave a client waiting,” the sailor said with a smirk. Nolan ignored her. Sometimes it was almost nice when people were too intimidated by him to talk to him in a mocking, sing-song voice. He’d have to remember her the next time he got pissed when no one dared sit near him.

He turned himself to the guy now gulping down his second cup of water. “Did they mention like … which tavern near the castle they’re waiting at,” he asked, voice flat. “There’s probably literally dozens.”

“Some place owned by the Abonet siblings,” he said. “The squire just said ‘they’re getting a drink at the Abonet’s place, you can send him to meet them there.’”

Brenfrey snorted. “Like everybody should be so familiar with the fancy places next to the castle, that you only need to know the proprietor’s name for directions.”

“I’ll find it,” Nolan said with a shrug. “At the worst, they’re kept waiting because their squire couldn’t be bothered to send me good directions.”

The sailor cocked her head at Nolan. “I would’ve _sworn_ , like, put actual money on the fact that most Philadrans love those fucking knights like they’re gods; wouldn’t dream of keeping them waiting. The inn I’m staying at has a framed portrait of them above the mantle just in case they ever want to stay there. You not a Philly boy, monster hunter?”

“Nolan’s worked with them before,” Brenfrey said. “Maybe they lose their shine once you actually know them.”

Nolan ignored both of them. He didn’t much feel like wasting time gossiping about how he did or didn’t feel about the knights when a short enough walk in the cold was the only thing keeping him from meeting up with them. He tugged the hood of his jacket up over his hair as close as he could and cut Brenfrey off long enough to slide him payment for Nolan’s meal and drink. “Thanks for letting me know they were looking for me,” he said, nodding at him and his employee and the sailor before turning his back to them and walking out of the tavern.

It hadn’t been an exaggeration to claim there were dozens of taverns on the way towards the king’s keep. The capitol city was filled to bursting with shops and business, starting on the shore with its docks and harbor and only getting denser the closer you got to the castle. There was more variety here than near the port where Nolan stayed. The establishments he tended to frequent were well-maintained and well-run, but they catered almost entirely to a working clientele. This close to the castle, you’d see fine taverns and shops and apartments for the nobles who stayed in the city on one street; the next one over, you’d see things for the people who worked for those nobles. The streets were more crowded, packed with vendors and carts on the sides and filled with a mad rush of people going every which way.

Nolan almost caught an elbow to the head trying to duck under a tavern’s hanging sign to read it and spared a second to wonder how tall someone had to be for their elbow to be at head-height for him. Mostly, though, he was just annoyed at the poor planning that put a tavern on a street corner with no signs or identifying markers on the side with its door.

In any case, he figured this was the place. The paint on the sign was peeling and weather-worn but he thought he saw a big _A_ somewhere in its center;. If this wasn’t the Abonet siblings’ place, Nolan could hope they’d at least point him in the right direction.

He stepped out from underneath the sign and stuck close to the tavern’s walls as he turned the corner to reach its sturdy, anonymous doors.

Nolan was pretty sure he’d never set foot in this place before. The air inside the place was almost uncomfortably warm; Nolan pushed his hood back from his head before the door even shut behind him, just to feel the last burst of remotely refreshing air on his neck. It was bright, too. Sconces on the wall flared with large fires at, frankly, alarming intervals. He figured that was one way to discourage any fights from breaking out in your tavern — though it seemed a way to discourage anyone from drinking too much, too. One wrong stumble and someone was liable to catch on fire.

Most of the place’s round tables were empty. There were a few with small groups sitting at them, a handful of people sitting at the bar, plus two people he assumed were staff walking around collecting empty cups from empty tables. Nolan was slowly looking around the place, taking it all in and giving himself time to adjust to the warmth and debate removing his jacket. Part of him hoped this was the wrong tavern. He didn’t know if he could have a whole, serious meeting while sweating his ass off. Before he had time to decide to duck out, he heard a pointed shout rise up from one of the room’s corners. “Hey! Nolan, over here!”

It was the right place, then. Nolan made aggressive eye contact with the knight waving him down and wove a path to the two tables they’d shoved together in the corner farthest from the doors, where, _fuck him_ , it was probably hottest. “Hey,” he said when he reached them, words not-quite clipped. “Wasn’t sure if this was the place.”

“We weren’t sure you were even in town, dude, so I feel like we’re all pretty even here,” the same knight said. He was smiling up at Nolan, warmly, and pushed back the empty seat at his right, with a gesture like Nolan should take it. Nolan squinted at him, trying to parse through the names he’d been given last time he worked with the king’s knights. He thought the one speaking might’ve been called Hayes but Nolan wasn’t about to use the name and be proven wrong. He shrugged instead, slipping his hands out of his jacket’s pockets with the motion, and threw himself cautiously into the proffered seat.

“Just got back,” he said, leaving out the part where his actual arrival was a week ago.

A few of the knights looked between one another and laughed, a small thing that didn’t feel mean and still set Nolan bristling a little. The redheaded guy Nolan knew was the commander of the knights gave Nolan a nod and a grin. “Well, yeah, that makes sense. We’d been asking around for you for a few weeks now, but then some bard rolled through a few nights ago singing a song about you —”

“ — what the _fuck_ ,” Nolan asked, with feeling.

“So we figured you were either actually around now or would be soon.” The commander finished, grinning teasingly at Nolan before pushing a full cup in front of him. “You getting songs written about you now?”

Nolan scowled at him, then turned his head to direct the expression at the other knights gathered at the tables, too. That just sent some of them into another round of muffled laughter. Nolan wasn’t, as a general rule, a fan of being laughed at. Twice in one day really had him nearing his limit. Then his eyes snagged at one of the knights on Hayes’ other side; remarkably fresh-faced, _very_ familiar.

The king had been masquerading as one of his knights the last time Nolan had encountered them, too. He wondered if he spent any time at all in the keep with his crown on. It really wasn’t Nolan’s place to ask, and he really didn’t care, but it seemed like the sort of question someone should be asking. The moment stretched on like a taffy pull, Nolan and the king maintaining easy eye-contact as the knights talked around them about various songs bards had written about _them_. Nolan broke the stare and turned back to the commander. “I didn’t — I had no fucking clue there were songs about me. I don’t even … shit.”

“You don’t even what?” King Carter asked.

Nolan scowled again, throwing his head against the unyielding wood of his seat with a solid _thunk_. “I was gonna say I don’t even know any bards,” he muttered. “But one cornered me when I was too exhausted to know better, at a tavern in some coastal hellhole.”

Hayes jabbed an elbow in Nolan’s side, getting Nolan to loll his head to look at him. He was smirking, fuck him. “Made that much of an impression on him, then?”

“I had _hoped_ not, shit,” Nolan said, scrubbing a hand over his eyes before he righted himself and looked at the rest of the knights. “Whatever. I’m assuming you didn’t send a summons my way just to laugh it up about some song about how much I suck.”

“It was actually a pretty complimentary song,” a young knight named Joel mused. “I think the guy mentioned your _‘visage so fair_ ,’ but that might’ve just been to keep up the rhyme.”

Another young knight laughed and asked, “You mean you don’t think Nolan’s got a _‘visage so fair_?’”

Nolan wondered if he could get away with shoving his chair back away from their tables and calmly, rationally, leaving the king and his knights alone in the tavern. It was tempting as hell. Some of that must’ve been written on his face because King Carter cut in, “We want you to hunt a monster for us.”

“Gods, Hartsy, who woulda guessed,” Hayes said from next to Nolan. Weird thing to call the king, but whatever. Maybe it was the false name he wore when running around as a knight. Nolan wouldn’t have any way of knowing. There was always a sort of false camaraderie Nolan felt when he was with the king’s knights; they folded him into their conversations with ease, made it feel easy to be one of them. But there was a distance. They were beloved by the whole kingdom, held up as heroes. Nolan was, like, tolerated sometimes. Even when they worked together Nolan fought very hard to remind himself that he wasn’t one of them. “I’m sure he knows we want him to hunt a monster. That’s literally Patty’s job description.”

“I really fucking regret telling you all my family name, you know,” Nolan said.

The commander cut everyone off. “There’s been a sighting of the Orange Beast in the mountains of eastern Thirin,” he said, getting Nolan’s attention. Everyone else’s, too. A hush fell over the knights’ tables, the only sound around them coming from the other, distant patrons of the tavern, and the light crackling of the fires on the walls. “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that word of the Orange Beast’s whereabouts haven’t reached Philadra in centuries.”

“You want me to kill the Orange Beast,” Nolan mumbled, something akin to horror lurking under his words. He focused on the table, not looking at the king or Hayes or the commander or any of the other knights who were, decidedly, not laughing anymore. Gods damn it all, he couldn’t ever catch a break — he should have _known_ he was jinxing himself by bringing up what had happened in Ravilet with Brenfrey and the sailor. It was inviting some cosmic fuckery into his life, when he really, _really_ didn’t need it.

It’d been one thing to tell some typical Raviletan bigots that he didn’t kill werewolves on account of them being people, with lives and stuff; he’d just stayed at the same inn as the werewolves, made small talk with them and pretended he was also headed towards the harbor. Nolan and the three of them got away from the Raviletans without consequence. This was different; there would be no staying at the same inn as the Orange Beast and letting that solve all his problems. It felt like a blow to the chest, knowing he’d have to tell the fucking _savior boy king of Philadra_ that no, Nolan wasn’t in the habit of killing creatures so ancient they were almost gods.

“Oh, shit — “ King Carter said, cutting into Nolan’s thoughts. “No, we don’t want you to kill it. I want you to hunt it down, and capture it, and bring it back to me.”

Nolan blinked and jerked his gaze away from the table. “What the hell? Why?”

The commander snorted inelegantly next to him. “C’mon. I’m sure even the sons of northern lords have heard stories about the Orange Beast.”

Nolan shrugged a solitary shoulder, flicking a bored look to the commander. It took some effort to look unbothered, but he tried. He desperately did not want to lose his cool about this impossible quest he was being given. “I mean, yeah, I’ve heard stories about it. It’s got fucked up eyes that follow you everywhere and if you want to get your kids to stay in line you threaten them with being eaten by the Orange Beast.”

“That’s about what I’d heard, too,” Hayes piped up. He bumped Nolan’s shoulder with his own in an ostensibly friendly move; Nolan guessed this was him offering backup. “It’s not like anyone really knows a ton about the Beast.”

Despite the risk of looking like he was forming a united front with Hayes, Nolan gave a small nod and reached for the cup in front of him. He took a drink from it and barely kept from wrinkling his nose at whatever overly spiced wine he’d just swallowed; he wasn’t sure what the hell he’d _guessed_ the commander would’ve gotten for him, but this wasn’t it. Over the lip of the cup, he saw two of the young knights who had spoken up earlier nodding along with Hayes, too.

King Carter sighed. Nolan honestly didn’t know how he knew anything different from what they knew, given that Nolan was pretty sure the king was only a few months older than him. “The Beast hasn’t been seen in Philadra in centuries. Historians — “

“ _Beast_ historians?” the young knight next to Joel asked, laughter coloring the edge of his words.

“Historians think he didn’t really mean to leave Philadra, just went wandering through the hills and lost himself,” King Carter said, ignoring the question with a display of iron will. Despite himself, Nolan was impressed. “If he’d wandered into either West or East Anslya, they’d have lorded the Beast over our heads as a bargaining chip in trade agreements. If the Thirish had him, they’d have tried to forge a stronger alliance using him to bait us into conceding more than we owe; if the Berenians had him, they’d try to keep him for themselves and make it known they had him.”

The commander interrupted the king, crossing his arms over his chest and directing a grim look in Nolan’s direction. “And if he’d wandered into Ravilet, they’d have killed him and sent us his pelt as proof.”

Yeah, all of that about checked out, Nolan thought. He took another ill-advised pull from his cup before giving into a grimace and setting it down on the tabletop before him. He took a moment to mull over his thoughts and noticed as he did that the tavern was slowly filling with more and more people as the afternoon settled into evening. Here in their corner, they were too far away from the door to get any burst of air when it opened and shut; Nolan couldn’t imagine how much hotter the place would get once it got really crowded.

“So … okay, how do you know where the Beast is now?” Nolan asked, shaking off his distraction. “You said he was in Thirin but you’re sending me to get him back, not a diplomatic team ready to negotiate. I can’t negotiate for shit.”

The king shrugged. “There are some Philadran expats at the Thirish border who sent word as soon as they saw tufts of orange hair in the grass the morning they discovered one of their sheep was missing. They’re at the foothills of the Thirish mountains — the Beast is probably hiding out in some cave no one ever touches.”

“Personally,” Joel spoke up again, “Not surprised to hear the Orange Beast eats sheep. That checks out with all the stories that say he’ll eat kids if their parents tell him they’ve been bad.”

The other young knight sitting next to him, shoved an elbow at the first one. “Are you saying those sheep’s parents told on them and got the Orange Beast’s attention?”

“Guys,” the commander said, looking pained. “C’mon, focus.”

Nolan looked back at the king and was surprised to see him grinning, looking only half as serious now as he’d been when he first told Nolan what kind of fool’s errand he was being sent on. Nolan spoke up again, looking at King Carter and trying to ignore the escalating banter of the knights around them. The tavern at large was getting rowdier, too, and Nolan needed to make something as clear as he could. “I really don't think I’m the guy to send on this job. I can’t — I have a very limited skill set. I’m not, actually, like, good with animals, really.”

Hayes looked sideways at him. “No, I don’t buy that at all. I’ve seen you with your horse.”

Nolan scowled. “Snow’s different. Snow’s not an immortal chaos monster you guys are asking me to casually escort back to the castle like it's a displaced noble.”

“Who would you have us ask to do this,” the commander asked, his inflection doing nothing to make that a question. He stared, unflinching, at Nolan. Nolan fought the urge to jerk his chin up at him in some kind of defiance. It took a lot of effort to meet his eyes head on. “Have you got any other monster hunters lying around, willing to do a job for Carter?”

“Maybe,” Nolan said, tone firmly entrenched in stubbornness. Stubbornness was a good shield for desperation; he’d say whatever absolute bullshit needed to be said to convince the king and his knights that this was fully _not_ something Nolan was capable of doing, “I trained with another monster hunter, called Jonathan, when I first found my magic. He could do it. He’s way better at the mental side of our magic, he could do the kind of shit you guys are asking me to do. Commune with the monster instead of killing it.”

The commander snorted again; it seemed like the sort of sound that was meant to be a laugh, though it lacked all actual humor. “Yeah, right, of course. Where’s he from again? The same province in the northern plains as you are? Nolan, you’ve gotta know that none of the lords from the north care that much about helping out Carter’s rule.”

“Jonny’s not, actually, a lord,” Nolan said like it changed anything.

“G,” Hayes said, raising both eyebrows at the commander until it seemed like his whole face was stretching out. Nolan wasn’t sure what the fuck that look was supposed to convey but he wasn’t a fan of it, at all. “Nolan’s a lord from the north and he cares plenty about helping Hartsy’s rule.”

“ _I’m_ not, actually, a lord,” Nolan said. Fuck; that probably wasn’t helping his case anymore than pointing out that Jonny wasn’t a lord. “I haven’t, like. Really had a title since I came into my magic.”

“Since you were attacked by a manticore and didn’t die, you mean,” King Carter said. “Seems a weird thing to strip your title over.” Nolan scowled at him. He spent a split second feeling like absolute shit, thinking about the king sending people to figure out all of Nolan’s history after the first time they met. The whole of the kingdom knew so much about Carter, and maybe it was only fair that it was so easy for him to find stuff out about people he needed to find stuff out about. But Nolan really, really hated the idea of people knowing stuff about his past when he couldn’t ever go back to it. His family shit was his to know about; not anything for the king to mention like it was nothing.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Since then. I’ve only been a monster hunter, only ever done the jobs people hire me to do. I trained with Jonny and figured out there was literally no other place for me in this fucking kingdom. I don’t get _asked_ to just capture monsters and bring them back to people, Carter. That’s not what people let monster hunters hang around for.”

Something told Nolan he’d earned the right in this conversation to dispense with titles.

The king leaned back in his seat, casual as anything. His piercing eyes were unwavering where they rested on Nolan, as focused as he’d been when he won the title of king. A shiver threatened to roll down Nolan’s back; something about that stare said more of this quest’s importance than anything else that’d been said so far. This really mattered to the king. “Well, I’m asking you to capture one and bring it back to me. First time for everything.”

“How is it possible you know what monster I was first attacked by, but you don’t know how my magic actually works?” Nolan asked, flat as anything. “I’m only good with monsters if I’m killing them. Literally no part of my skill-set makes me a good fit for this job.”

Hayes shrugged. “It’s like Hartsy said, there’s a first time for everything.”

“I don’t feel like this is the sort of job you do as your first time,” Nolan countered, words as derisive as he could make them without being too big of a dick to Hayes. The knight had only seemed to want to have Nolan’s back here, but he’d really rather have no one in his corner when he was about to let them all down. He hunched forward in his seat and took hold of his cup again, holding it in both hands like he needed the warmth of it. Really, it was getting _too_ warm; spiced wine was about the last thing he wanted to drink right now. The tavern beyond their little corner was bustling, waitstaff running around as tables steadily filled. “Like, it sounds like capturing this Orange Beast is a big fucking deal. I’m going to fuck it up, so. You should find someone else.”

Next to him, the commander heaved a legendary sigh. Nolan sat back in his seat and looked sideways at him. “There isn’t anyone else, Nolan,” he said while Nolan stared. Which. That just felt like the sort of thing that absolutely could not be true.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the king shrug.

“We’ve worked with you before, thrice now,” Carter said. Nolan looked away from his commander for a second to make eye-contact with the king. “There’s — trust there, I guess. You care about Philadra as much as the rest of us. You won’t screw us over when you get to the Orange Beast.”

“Not on purpose, maybe,” Nolan shot back. He set his cup back down with a hefty _thud_ , not even bothering to pretend he was going to drink from it. “But I don’t know how the fuck to capture and transport a chaos monster as old as the gods. Like, whatever, you want me to be the one to do it; but you can’t just want it hard enough to ensure I won’t fuck it up.”

“I don’t think it’d be that hard for you,” Hayes cut in. “The whole thing with the Orange Beast, apparently, is that he fucking loves Philly and its heroes. I think you’ve gotta count for the latter. Once you find him he’ll want to follow you to Carter and it’ll be done.”

Carter tried for a grin, directing its full boyish force at Nolan until he looked away. He wouldn’t be tricked by love of his king. “You’ve got bards writing songs about you and everything now. _Definitely_ a hero.”

Nolan looked away from all of them then, focusing hard on the tavern door and staring unseeing at the people coming in and out of it. “Not a hero,” he mumbled. It wasn’t self-deprecation, just a plain statement of fact. “I don’t kill monsters out of the goodness of my heart or anything like that. I get hired. I do the jobs I’m hired to do, that’s all. I literally didn’t fucking ask to have some bard write a song about me just because I talked to him once when exhausted as hell.”

“Whatever. If you think that’s all you are, then hurry up and accept the job we’re hiring you to do,” Carter said. The grin was fading from his face, all of his posture falling back to seriousness. It pulled Nolan’s focus, almost against his will. He flicked a glance to Carter before turning away again. “What payment do you want for it? Capturing the Orange Beast — it could be the key to restoring Philadra’s glory in the eyes of the world. Having him back on Philadran soil where he belongs could be the key to righting the misery that’s fallen over our land for centuries. Whatever price you name, it’s yours.”

Nolan forced himself to turn away front the tavern and face the king head-on. If this was a fool’s errand (and he _knew_ it was), then Nolan could ask for something foolish.

He knew, really, that it would be impossible for him to complete the quest. He didn’t know shit about the Orange Beast; he’d take Hayes and Carter and G at their word on its importance and love for Philadra, but when he got to it he wouldn’t be _heroic_ enough to lead it back to Carter, and he wouldn’t be strong enough to capture it through force. One bard’s song did not a hero make. One glorious quest did not a hero make, either, but it was tempting to think of what lay beyond the quest’s end.

“If I take this on,” Nolan hedged, and saw Carter start to grin at him again. “If I take it on, and find the Beast and lead him to you … ” he said, trailing off. Around the table, the other knights started grinning again too, seeming to take this as far more than Nolan only saying he’d try. Fuck, they were acting like this was an assurance the Beast would be back soon. Nolan regretted it all already. Next to him, Nolan would swear the commander was starting to laugh, a sound of pleased disbelief. It was less heavy than the king’s proud gaze and also a million times harder to shoulder.

“What?” Hayes asked with an over-wide grin, nudging Nolan’s side with his boisterous jostling. “What do you want?”

Nolan shrugged. “If I complete this quest, I want to become a knight.”

Carter nodded at him, maintaining his air of seriousness even as he was beaming wide at Nolan. He imagined he could feel his stomach sinking like a stone; the king looked so happy, so _relieved_. He trusted Nolan with this important thing, even though Nolan had fought hard to get him to drop that trust. He couldn’t imagine an outcome to this that didn’t end with him letting every knight at this table down. Carter nodded again, decisive and sure. “Yeah. I can’t imagine anyone who’d be a better fit. The second you return with the Beast, I’ll knight you where you stand.”

The king looked away from him to talk to the knights across the table at him, smiling wide and laughing with an ease Nolan didn’t understand. Nolan sighed quietly. He honestly didn’t think any of the knights would’ve heard it over their excited chatter and debate over what snacks they should order now that business was taken care of, but next to him he saw the commander tilt his head at him — considering, almost. “You’ve got this,” G said, words measured. Nolan blew a gust of air out of his nose and didn’t respond; he took a moment to let the noise of the tavern and their two tables crash over him like a wave. “You might not think so, but you’re capable of seeing this through.”

Nolan cocked his head in his direction, too, trying not to look so obvious about their side conversation. “If you say so.”

“I do,” the commander said. A note of finality threaded its way through those two words, like it was that easy. Nolan wondered if that’s how he inspired his knights — if he only had to say something simple like that to get everything turned around for them, to get them to see a bigger picture. It felt like a kind of magic. He looked away again.

“I’m going to get a drink that isn’t some bullshit spiced wine,” Nolan said, announcing it to the table at large. Now that he was looking at all of them again he saw that a few of the younger knights were gone, presumably off ordering food for the table or telling the tavern’s owners that they no longer needed to be left undisturbed.

Next to him, Hayes stood up and brushed his hands over his lap to get rid of some imaginary crumbs, saying, “I think I’ll join you. No offense to the bullshit spiced wine, but someone’s gotta help Patty out on the way there.”

Nolan leveled a flat look Hayes’ way. “I think I’d be able to manage just fine.”

“Nah, I’ll help. Anyone else want anything while we’re at the bar?” he asked, pointing a finger at each remaining knight in turn. A few of them lifted their hands or called out requests and Hayes just nodded seriously at each one. Nolan wasn’t really paying attention; part of him wanted to see if Hayes’ memory would serve at all by the time the pair of them reached the bar.

They wended their way through the tavern, packed now in a way it really, really hadn’t been upon Nolan’s initial arrival. He’d been right in his belief that the place would only get hotter as the night wore on. It just felt so _warm_ ; the merry flames in the sconces on the walls bathed the place in a golden light in addition to giving off heat. He could see the windows on the tavern’s far wall fog up with the difference in temperature, and knew that when he returned outside to make the long walk back to his apartment it would be freezing. Now, though, he just felt almost uncomfortably hot in the thick jacket he hadn’t remembered to take off while he was sitting at their table.

Hayes seemed content to leave Nolan to his thoughts as they tried to fight their way to the tavern’s bartop. There wasn’t the same kind of order to the layout of this tavern, not at all like the neatly arranged tables he’d seen in Lisbet’s tavern and very different from the long tables and benches that populated Brenfrey’s tavern.

There was a sort of disorder to this place — Nolan could see people calling to others sitting several tables away, and hopping from group to group. More people than the king and his knights had had the bright idea to shove a couple of tables together to better seat larger groups. It was so fucking disorderly that Nolan almost found himself charmed by it, against his better judgement. No one seemed to regard any of this as special. Nolan wondered, if this is what they were like on a random evening at the end of autumn, what they’d be like once the actual solstice reared its head. He’d been elbowed or shoved, like, twice already by people who immediately turned to grin at him in apology.

He wondered if any of them knew their king was in their midst; or if they only thought him another one of their famed knights, the champions of their fierce, embattled kingdom. Someone to be admired, surely, but not anyone worth stopping their fun for.

The bar, when they reached it, was as crowded as the rest of the tavern. Most of the seats at the bartop were taken, people strung between them like a garland made of vibrant chatter. Nolan and Hayes shouldered their way to an open spot where they could flag down the barkeep; Nolan was personally convinced they were only able to do so thanks to their height. It helped sometimes, to be someone people tended not to miss.

Hayes turned to lean his back against the bartop and face the tavern, leaving Nolan to keep an eye on the barkeep and wait for him to get to taking their order from them. “When do you think you’ll head out to start your search for the Beast?” he asked, tone placid and curious.

Nolan shrugged and pulled a bitchy face — but only because he knew Hayes wasn’t actually looking at him. “As soon as possible, I guess.” He scrubbed a hand over his mouth and rested his elbow on the bartop, trying not to think about beyond the mechanics of his answer. “I’ll go back to my apartment and pack again. Gather supplies for the road. Figure out a route, then hit the road.”

“Nothing special to prepare for this?” Hayes didn’t sound, like overly judgmental. But Nolan tensed anyway, like maybe this was a test he was failing.

“Like what? I have no fucking clue what I’m doing with this anyway,” Nolan said. “I’d only psych myself out if I treated this any different from all the other jobs I’ve done.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Nolan saw Hayes begin to open that mouth of his. Nolan had absolutely no interest in whatever sort of platitudes and assurances were going to fall out. He half-tensed in preparation and felt insurmountable relief when the barkeep came over to them and essentially halted the conversations. _Fuck the knights_ , Nolan thought as Hayes began rattling off the knights’ orders, _this man’s the real hero in this tavern_.

“ — and, Patty, what did you want again?” Nolan blinked and realized he hadn’t come up with a real plan beyond getting something other than spiced wine.

“Shit,” he said, face flushing for no gods damned reason. He should’ve at least paid more attention to what the other knights were getting. “Uh, fuck, well, _not_ any wine I guess … “

A distressingly familiar voice rose up behind Nolan; he wondered if he was just, whatever, _destined_ to hear that same voice pipe up at his back in taverns. It took more self control than Nolan had even known he possessed to keep from banging his head on the bartop in front of him in defeat. “Their cider’s pretty good. The pumpkin ale is also in season if you’re into that kinda stuff,” the bard said, and Nolan blindly nodded at the barkeep, mumbling that he’d take the second thing. He was pretty sure the barkeep nodded at him in turn before moving to get his and Hayes’ and the knights’ drinks ready. Nolan was too busy having a small crisis to really double check.

Some days shit just happened so much, you know? Like, fuck. When Nolan gave the universe the occasional plea for a break he really didn’t expect it to say, _fuck you and also you’ve gotta deal with even **more** shit now just for asking_, but he really should start expecting it. Next to him, he swore he could almost hear Hayes break into a shit-eating grin. Nolan forgot why he’d even asked to join the order of knights in the first place. Assholes, each and every one of them.

“Ay, it’s you! You’re the bard we heard singing Patty’s praises a few nights ago,” Hayes said. Nolan turned to dig his side into the bartop, slouching as much as he could, and saw Hayes reach out to clasp the bard’s forearm.

“Oh, shit,” the bard said, clasping Hayes’ forearm in turn before letting go. Nolan noted he was wearing another ridiculous doublet, this one with a matching cap. “I didn’t know his name was Patty, I called him Nolan in the song. My bad.”

Nolan didn’t want to engage. He wasn’t going to engage. Engaging would only draw it out —

“Nolan’s my actual fucking name,” he mumbled, turning a little further so he could ensure his glare was actually met by Hayes’ eyes. He seemed wholly unmoved by it. The bard, too, only grinned wider when Nolan spoke.

“Yeah? It’s a pretty nice name,” he said, once more seeming not intimidated by Nolan in the least. He didn’t even seem to notice that Nolan hadn't even addressed him when he spoke. “Not much really rhymes with it though, that was hell.”

Hayes laughed, the sound stretching out around the three of them and joining the cacophony of the tavern. Gods, the place was getting loud. Nolan narrowed his eyes at Hayes, even knowing he wasn’t looking at Nolan any more. It was the principle of the thing. “Listen, it was a great fucking song,” Hayes said, words still wheezing and delighted. “Who cares if you couldn’t rhyme something with Patty’s name specifically? All the boys were big fans. We told Patty we heard it as soon as he joined us tonight.”

The bard grinned even bigger, a crooked, pleased thing. Nolan wondered if he’d been able to clock the knights as knights as easily as he’d clocked Nolan as a monster hunter; if he’d rolled with their presence as easily as Nolan had seen him roll with other things. The thought made him glare further, though neither the bard nor Hayes seemed to be paying him much mind. His face felt hot; he really needed to be rid of his jacket as soon as he and Hayes got the tables’ drinks and sat back down.

“I’m glad you liked it, man,” the bard said.

“Oh, of course. Patty here deserves to have a fuckton of songs written about him, it was only a matter of time,” Hayes said, assuring him. He clapped Nolan on the shoulder and jostled him a little. Nolan wanted to keep up his glare at Hayes but couldn’t maintain the energy to look like more than a disgruntled cat. “He’s thrilled, honestly.”

The bard wore a smile that matched Hayes’ in sheer mischief. Nolan felt distinctly ganged up on. He thought, like, just maybe, he shouldn't be ganged up on right after agreeing to complete a quest for the good of the kingdom. It’d have been nice if Hayes felt like being chill. “He looks thrilled,” the bard agreed. Nolan wondered if there was any sarcasm there, or if the bard was really, _really_ shit at reading people. It had to be one of the two; either Nolan was the butt of the joke or this bard’s fucked up charisma was even more improbable than previously thought. “Look at him. Gods, shoulda thought to write in a line about those rosy cheeks, really hammer home what a looker he is.”

It wasn’t too early in the evening to start a bar fight, right? Carter had already promised Nolan his reward. He’d still have to knight Nolan if he completed the quest even if he got into a bar fight with some bard now.

Hayes just laughed even further, doubling over with it. Behind Nolan, he heard the barkeep clear his throat and set down a tray heavily laden with drinks for Nolan and the knights. He thanked the man and slid him the required coin, deciding he’d leave Hayes to deal with carting it through the maze of tables back to their spot in the corner. He took off without looking back at Hayes and the bard.

By the time he reached the tables, he was unsurprised to see that Hayes was coming back with the bard in tow. Like, genuinely unsurprised, given the course of Nolan’s evening.

Hayes set the tray down on one of the tables. Nothing sloshed over any of their cups, and in spite of himself Nolan was very nearly impressed. Hayes was grinning easy as anything at the table when he finished arranging the tray away from the edges of either table. “Guys,” he said, barely contained glee threaded through his words. “This is TK. You guys remember TK.”

The table erupted in even more chatter, all the knights buzzing to compliment TK’s song and talk about how they’d _immediately_ told Nolan about it when he met up with them. That felt predictable; at least he now had a name to put with the bard’s face.

Nolan was taking his jacket off and saw G throw an amused glance in his direction. Nolan sat down with a huff and decided he wasn’t going to look at anyone who seemed to be too excited about this. That severely limited his options at their tables, but so be it. He’d just finish his drink in silence and walk out to begin his quest’s preparations. And anyway, being rid of his jacket was wondrous enough that he thought he’d focus on that for a while; Nolan started rolling the ends of his sleeves up his forearms, looking up only when he was done and decided it was time for him to start in on whatever fucking pumpkin ale he’d ordered in a daze.

When he glanced up, he saw the bard looking at him, his gaze not-quite heavy as he watched Nolan stretch an arm across the table towards the tray of drinks. Nolan wondered if he was finally taking notice of Nolan’s less than warm reaction to him; part of him felt guilty at that. He didn’t like knowing someone wrote a song about him for no reason, but it felt rude to be so plain about it. Behind TK, Hayes was pulling a stray chair from a nearby cluster of tables and shoving it on his other side, presumably so the bard could sit and join them.

“What the fuck kind of luck is this, right?” Hayes asked once he and the bard were both seated again. “We’ve got Patty, we ran into TK … this feels like a great fucking omen.”

Carter snorted. “Sure, Hayesy,” he drawled, seeming awfully chill with a stranger sitting at their table in the corner. “It’s not like this is the same place we first saw Travis. And it’s not like we specifically invited Nolan here, or anything.”

Next to Nolan, G burst into a sharp laugh. Nolan sighed and slouched back in his seat, taking his ale with him for moral support.

TK grinned wide at the table. “Feel’s like luck to me, yeah.”

“Ex _actly_ ,” Hayes said, pointing at TK with a serious look. “And luck is the exact right kind of good omen Patty needs right now.” He slung an arm over the back of Nolan’s shoulders, pulling Nolan in. He was too focused on not spilling his ale to put up much of a fight at being manhandled by the knight. Something told him Hayes had banked on that before reaching for him. “He’s got a new quest,” Hayes finished.

Some of the knights whooped or clanged their cups on the tabletops in front of them, generally causing a ruckus that Nolan didn’t think was needed. He got quests and jobs all the time; until he completed it, he wasn’t doing anything special.

On Nolan’s other side, Nolan could see G make a brief, pained face, like maybe he thought that was something Hayes should’ve kept to himself despite the very unspecific phrasing. Nolan sympathized; this whole meeting with the knights had been one long, drawn out experience of everyone saying and wanting him to say things that should’ve been kept to themselves. Carter nodded, slowly, looking at TK with supreme focus. “Yeah, that’s why we’re here tonight. We didn’t know when Nolan would be back in town; your song was a great help in figuring he had to be around soon.”

TK grinned again, said, “Well, I’m always happy to be of service.” Nolan wondered if he’d leave it at that; maybe his nosiness from Frog’s Mouth was a one off thing. Then TK asked “What’s the quest?” and Nolan knew his hope had been as futile as always.

“I’m heading towards the mountains of Thirin,” Nolan answered, words flat and low. He spared half a second to wonder if the bard would be stupid enough with that information for Nolan to worry about getting murdered on the road, but soon discarded the thought. No point in being morbid for morbidity’s sake, not when he wasn’t yet alone on the road with only his stupid thoughts to fuck him up. Anyway, he couldn’t think of enough words that’d rhyme with Thirin to really put him in danger.

The bard just nodded at the information, and next to him Nolan saw G scrub a pained hand over his eyes, like he thought Nolan was being stupid and was barely refraining from smacking the back of his head about it.

“Nice,” the bard said, and that was that.

The knights only got rowdier as the evening wore on and the business they’d initially met for got further and further in the past. Nolan could see why they picked this tavern for their meeting, instead of going to find him at Brenfrey’s — their energy was matched by all the other patrons, everyone in good spirits and high cheer. It never did get any cooler but it was easy to grow accustomed to the warmth everywhere.

Nolan lost track of the number of ales he’d consumed by the time he bid them his leave; most of the knights were engaged then in some drinking game with several other patrons, competing as fiercely as they did in any tourney. He’d felt himself relaxing into their company and knew he had to leave then if he didn’t want to get sucked in,

A part of him did; a larger part of him knew that the next day would be filled with preparations for his quest, that perhaps he could leave at dusk or the following dawn if he didn’t fuck around. He wanted to get on the road and get everything over with. Even warmed by the flickering torchlight and packed crowds of the tavern, he felt resigned to this quest. None of the king’s surety had rubbed off on him, and neither had any of the knights’ optimism. In a way it was nice that they all felt so certain he had this quest in the bag, but mostly it just made Nolan uncomfortable. He'd felt cracked open by his requested payment, like after he told Carter he wanted to be a knight they’d all look at him and feel like they knew he longed for the kind of camaraderie they had.

He tugged his jacket on and waved goodbye to Carter and the other knights still lingering at the table before he threaded his way back towards the tavern doors.

The first gust of cool air outside of them felt refreshing. Nolan was sure he’d get annoyed at the cold the closer he got to his apartment, but for now, it was nice. He shut his eyes and leaned his face up to the wind for a second, letting it brush over the heated skin of his cheeks. It was sobering, centering. “Nice out, huh?” a voice said from his left, startling Nolan. He only kept from jumping half a foot in the air thanks to years of working at sharpening his reflexes even when he wasn’t actively using his magic. As it was, he was immediately shaken out whatever centered feeling he’d had for a moment there. Nolan jerked his head to the left and wasn’t surprised to see that it was the bard, TK, speaking to him.

“I thought you were still inside,” Nolan said, neutral and dry.

TK just grinned at him, crooked as it had been earlier, and shrugged. He took the few steps needed to stand next to Nolan and fell in step with him easily when Nolan took that as his cue to really start walking away from the tavern. “Nah,” he answered easily. “It was time for me to head on out of there.”

Nolan glanced sideways at him. “No lute tonight,” he said.

TK huffed out a short laugh, the sound of it sharp and biting in the cool night air. “Not tonight, yeah,” he said, shrugging until his hands ended up in the pockets of his trousers. “Why? Were you angling to hear your song?”

“Fuck, no,” Nolan said with feeling. He shifted his weight uncomfortably as they walked, wondering if there’d be an easy way to shake the bard somewhere between here and his apartment. He didn’t feel like having company the whole walk back, not when he’d been planning on using this time to process the quest and hammer out the beginnings of a route to Thirin. “I never want to hear a song about me, like, ever.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Nolan saw TK shrug, unbothered by the vehemence in Nolan’s words. “It might not be, like, the best song ever, but it wasn’t anything mean or uncool I don’t think.”

Nolan shrugged his shoulders up to his ears, belatedly noting that he should have thought to flip up his hood before walking. It felt like it’d be weird to do it now, with someone walking next to him. “The knights said,” he said, simply. He felt his face heating at the memory of Joel quoting it in reference to his _‘visage so fair_.’ How did the knights keep up an amicable relationship with any bards, knowing the kind of shit that they said about them in their songs and stories? Nolan really wanted to flip his hood up then, and only didn’t because he knew the cold air had already pinked his nose and cheeks. “Still. Not really a fan of hearing about myself.”

TK nodded next to him, improbable sage once again. “Makes sense,” he said. “Can’t go getting a big head or anything before the big quest.”

Nolan grunted a vague sound of affirmation. The streets weren’t as back at night as they were during the day. It was easy to make his way away from the castle and back towards the harbor and his usual haunts. He wondered how long it would take him to find the Beast, _if_ he found it. If he’d be back in the city before the solstice; and if he was, if he’d return empty handed.

The bard struck Nolan as someone used to filling the air with endless chatter. When they’d first met, he’d seen him holding court over people with no music, just a story weaving around them and leaving them spellbound. In the tavern, once the knights had all settled down, he’d talked a mile a minute with anyone who wanted to listen. It felt strange that he was being so quiet now. Nolan barely knew him but he still wondered if something was wrong, or if he should stay on edge waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Listen,” TK said. Nolan guessed this was the other shoe dropping. “I want to go with you.”

Nolan scrunched his face up in confusion. “To my apartment? Dude, no. I figured you were just headed in the same direction or whatever.”

TK laughed, the sound filling the chilled air around them again. “Nah, man,” he said. “On the quest.”

The wind picked up a little, sending the ends of Nolan’s hair to slap into his face. For a second, TK’s words still hung in the air around them; their echo and the distant whistle of the cold wind the only sounds. Nolan didn’t even know where the fuck to start here. “Uh, no,” he said, again. “That does not feel like it’s a good idea, what the fuck.” He chanced a sideways glance at the bard and saw that he was just looking at Nolan, seemingly waiting for the rest of Nolan’s words to come. Nolan wasn’t sure there _was_ a rest to what he was saying.

_No_ felt pretty succinct.

Next to him, TK shrugged, looking largely unbothered by Nolan’s response . “I dunno, I think it could be a good idea. You know? And I’ve never been to Thirin before.”

“I’m not going on vacation,” Nolan said, words slow and judgmental. “I’m going to like … complete a quest for the king, and shit. It’s nearly winter, so not a fun time to travel anyway, and you’d be travelling south _with me_ , which is, for the record, never a fun time.”

“No, yeah, I hear all of that,” TK said, shifting his shoulders forward against the wind. Nolan crossed his arms over his chest and tried to focus on the fact that they were near the harbor now, and almost to Nolan’s apartment. “I totally hear you. But, bud, I’m really fine with the rough travel. I travel kind of all the time, too. Plus — “ _here we go_ , Nolan thought, _this has to be the ulterior motive here, the reason behind this batshit proposition_. He wondered if TK wanted to follow him around to mine his actions for another song or story, or something; the knights had all seemed to genuinely like the first one, once they were done using it as a means to rag on Nolan. It made a kind of sense that maybe the bard wanted to follow Nolan around until he’d gotten another song to travel around with. “I don’t know, bud, I just don’t think you should travel alone.”

“What the fuck,” Nolan said, flat. He didn’t bother concealing his feelings here, just shot TK a look as bitchy as the one he’d kept from leveling at Hayes earlier.

TK didn’t seem phased by Nolan’s expression. “You seemed, like, not the most excited or confident about this one,” he said. “I don’t know. I feel like if you’re not feeling great about it, you at least shouldn’t do it alone, man.”

They were within a block of Nolan’s apartment now, in front of an inn he knew was frequently used by sailors. He’d stepped in once or twice, when seeing one about a job; he knew it was the one Vrienna had probably been talking about earlier, with its portrait of the knights hanging proudly inside. He didn’t think TK had been walking with Nolan because he had a destination in the same direction; his intentions had just been made pretty fucking clear. He sure as hell wasn’t going to let the bard walk him all the way to his place, not when he seemed to have a strange idea that Nolan should take him on this fool’s errand of a quest. He’d leave TK here and take off as soon as possible — sooner than he’d even initially intended to leave for this quest.

Nolan shook his head, tightening the hold his arms had over his torso. “I don’t need company,” he insisted. “I just need to get this job finished as quickly as possible.”

TK snapped his fingers, pointing at Nolan with the action. “Yeah, that attitude just doesn’t scream, _I actually **want** to do this alone_, to me. I’m gonna join you, man, either right off the bat or somewhere along the way. There’s only so many roads south to Thirin.”

Gods, Nolan didn’t know why this guy couldn’t just cut his losses.

“I don’t — “ Nolan cut himself off, shaking his head and looking away from TK. He couldn’t think of another way to phrase it, to say that he didn’t need him to join Nolan, that he worked just fine when he was alone. He settled on saying, “It’s an important quest. Like, really important. I need to just get it done, I can’t have any distractions.”

“I’m not a distraction,” TK said simply. Easy, like that was that. He jerked his head in the direction of the inn’s doors, and said, “I’ll catch up with you tomorrow. Alright? Don’t head out alone, dude. We’ve got this.”

Nolan wasn’t really sure what it was they _had_ , but before he could ask, TK ducked into the inn with a small smile and wave tossed in Nolan’s direction. Not even a minute ago, that’s what he was angling for the bard to do, and now part of him wanted to drag him back out into the cold so they could argue some more about how TK was very much not joining Nolan tomorrow. He felt like he’d lost the argument, despite knowing he was in the right, here. Nolan stood outside the inn’s doors for a moment longer, feeling frustrated and confused. Then he forced himself to continue walking back to his apartment. He had packing to do, and rest to catch, if he wanted to head out soon without TK tagging along.


End file.
